Interesting find

[RoachGirlRen]

I went out to a local park today to do some photography and gather some duckweed for the pre-release enclosure of a snapping turtle I have in as a wildlife patient right now. While I was out, I heard some rustling in the tall grass by the pond, and found - much to my surprise - a sulcutta tortoise!

I have found a red eared slider (non-native in NY) AND a stray domesticated rat already this month. Yes, this is the third apparently released (the park is pretty far from houses so I doubt it walked there) pet I've found in May alone. Ungh! I understand it's a bad economy but for pete's sake people, bring your friggen animals to a rescue. There's a big ol tortoise rescue just two hours away in NYC.

The lil guy (maybe girl) is a bit skinny and super hungry. It ate a handsome fistfull of wild dandelion greens on the car ride home, and is currently plowing through some mixed dark lettuces and collards. Poor beast.

I'll post pics when I get home from work.

 

[Toirtis]

Good on you...quite the surprise, though. I had a leopard tortoise come to me that was found in a large indoor garden-park here in Calgary...based on his size when found, he must have been released there within a couple of days of my finding him.

 

[zonbonzovi]

:wall:

Glad you found it- would have been a death sentence with those NY winters.

 

[Toirtis]

Problem is dealers. I had a guy call me from Manhattan (Crazily enough) to get information of taking care of the two pet sulcata tortoises that he had purchased. When I found out where he was calling from, and determined that he lived in a 900 sq ft apartment, I explained to him that his pets would get to the size of mobile ottomans and smell like a horse-barn, all the while eating a lawn's worth of grass daily and pooping out waste the size of small bread loaves. He had NO IDEA that they got any bigger than 5" ...the seller had told him they got no bigger than that. Thankfully, I was able to direct him to a rescue, or they could have easily ended up in that very park.

 

[H. laoticus]

glad you found it and sweet find as well! These guys are pricey!

 

[RoachGirlRen]

Heh, not REALLY a "sweet find" given the level of care they need. I'm hoping to move down south soon and if that pans out, I'll probably keep it - but if I wind up staying in NY, there's no way I won't search out a rescue, as I just don't have the year-round indoor facilities for a Sulcutta at adulthood.

 

[bugmankeith]

Only exotic i've ever seen was 2 blue parakeets with a flock of starlings feeding at a birdfeeder, and a peacock that flew in a tree above my house. I live in NY too so it was quite unusual.

 

[pouchedrat]

I used to live upstate NY and yeah, the pet stores everywhere used to sell baby sulcattas like they were nothing. I don't know too many people with the ability to keep a sulcatta in NY year-round unless they have a seperate shed during winter or whatnot. We lived in the snow capital of the nation, after all. I'd imagine not many lived for long, and probably a lot of pyramiding going on...

I've been lucky and the only released pet I've found was a ferret (who I wound up keeping, and who also wound up costing me a good $1000 dollars in vet bills within the first couple weeks of owning him). There was a guy I played warhammer with who said there were sugar gliders outside in the woods where he lived and he could hear them all day and night long. I'm sure after winter, they weren't there anymore, though.

 

[pitbulllady]

Between your Sulcatta and my Rainbow Boa, we sure seem to be finding a lot of out-of-place pets lately!

pitbulllady

 

[RoachGirlRen]

Just realized I never posted photos! Here is Morla:

 

[pouchedrat]

His pyramiding isn't that bad at all, that's good!
for some reason I imagined an abandoned sulcata as having serious deformities, but it's VERY mild, although it does look like the beginning of it.

 

[the toe cutter]

I agree with PR there, pyramiding is normal and healthy. And for its size it looks to be in great condition, someone knew what they were doing and spent some time raising him/her. Great find, perhaps I should start going herping in NY city parks?

 

[ZergFront]

Wow, good shape and glad you stumbled upon it. Look at the tail base. Males tend to have a "fatter" appearence. My Mom always bought female box tortoises (even female rodents!) because she thought the tails of the male were ugly.

 

[super-pede]

sweet find!

I found a tiger retic baby just two weeks ago under a piece of tin.Mine now.

S-P

 

[OldHag]

I love sulcuttas! Ive wanted one for years, but just dont have the room.. nor the money to feed one. sigh...

I have a whole colony of domestic rats living in my wood pile.. they've bred with the wild rats and there are some interesting patterns going on now..
Why would someone turn their rats loose in a neighbors woodpile.. WHY?????

 

[RoachGirlRen]

Probably the same reason someone would let domesticated mice loose in a garage. Yes, this did happen at my house several years ago.

 

[pitbulllady]

Sometimes, though, color/pattern mutations in rats and mice just happen, spontaneously, and aren't necessarily the result of escapees or deliberate releases. A few years ago, an aquaintance of mine was having a mouse problem. She bred dogs, coonhounds and APBT's mostly, and had a nice kennel, which was located on the edge of Lynches River swamp in the middle of nowhere. As most kennels will experience, the mice discovered an unlimited source of food and shelter, and set up shop. At first, she only saw regular gray-brown "agouti"-colored mice, the typical wild house mouse coloration, but then, white ones started to appear. Not albino mice, mind you-these had black eyes, yet pure-white coats. If I had to guess, I'd say they were leucistics, or something similar. She froze and saved several of the white ones to show me, and I got to see several of them running around her feed shed myself. They were actually rather pretty, for a pest, and I would have loved to have caught several alive and gotten them to my rodent breeder friend to see how that mutation worked, if it was recessive or dominant. The woman tried to eliminate the mice herself, with traps and poisons and rat snakes, but eventually did have to call in an exterminator. She had no close neighbors, and had never kept any rodents herself other than a couple of baby beavers she bottle raised many years prior to this, so it's unlikely that anyone had dumped any leucistic mice there, plus you don't often see black-eyed white mice in captive colonies, not compared to the other patterns. Just recently, while snake hunting on our own property with a couple of buddies of mine, we discovered a rat colony near an abandoned hog parlor which included several BLUE rats. I don't mean gray; I mean BLUE, pale silvery-blue, definitely dilutes, and we managed to capture three youngsters. One of my buddies has his own colony of feeder rats and took the pups home with him, and he says that they are doing fine and are very tame, and definitely not the typical agouti rat coloration. They have a "ruby" appearance to their eyes, not black eyes. No one has had any live domestic rats anywhere near that could have produced that morph; I'm highly allergic to rodents, and all rats I've bought since living on this property have been frozen, quite incapable of reproducing, lol.

pitbulllady

 

[RoachGirlRen]

These were colors like cream and white and the like, and there is a slight difference in form between wild and domesticated house mice. Plus, one of them as SUPER tame and friendly. Since we do animal rescue work, I have little doubt that someone dumped them off. Why they didn't do so in a secure container, I do not know.

 

[OldHag]

Sometimes, though, color/pattern mutations in rats and mice just happen, spontaneously, and aren't necessarily the result of escapees or deliberate releases.

pitbulllady

It started out with a bunch of albinos, then there were hooded rats.. now the warf rats have white blotches and such on them. There are still some albinos floating around too.. They are smaller than the "wild" rats as well. So probably not natural. Been hard trapping them all.. they are smart monsters!

 

[Miss Bianca]

Thats a very beautiful find Ren.. looks very healthy...
and also, (@ the person that said they should start in NYC parks)
it's NY right? Not NYC... lol..

Hope everything turns out the way you'd like it to.

I'd love to keep a sulcata.. but Ive always lived in the city, and it just wouldn't work..