Dear Members and Friends:

Our Summer meeting will be held on Saturday, July 17th from 1:30 until 4 at the newly renovated Belle Cooledge Library 5600 South Land Park Drive 95822. It will be good seeing you all again and I'm sorry we had to cancel the Spring meeting but sometimes things happen that we can't control. We'll have our 29th club anniversary celebration 3 months late. I will trust nobody with the cake. It will be up in front of the room with me.

We do have a guest scheduled. Her name is Elizabeth Koutsos, PH.D. She works for Mazuri in technical and nutrition services and specializes in reptile nutrition which she will talk about. We are all interested in providing the very best nutrition for our pets so I am sure her talk will be very interesting and enlightening and extremely helpful as well. Questions are encouraged.

A lot of you began your own mealworm cultures after reading our Spring newsletter. How are you doing with those? I had a near catastrophe with one of mine. For some reason, it became invaded with ants. I have three tubs alongside one another on the patio and one day, one of the bins was completely inundated with ants. I didn't know what to do. It took me a few days to think about it and I took the mess outside and put some bran into another container and with tweezers, one by one, lifted out the unharmed beetles and mealworms and put them into the new culture. It took about 2 hours but I couldn't see throwing the whole thing out. After all, this is a NO KILL shelter! That includes mealworms, until they become food, of course! The ants then exited, and were very ticked off. I don't know why they invaded the one tub and not the others. Another Bunker Mystery!!

In February, the DF&G commissioners decided to stop issuing permits for the Oriental markets to sell turtles and frogs for human consumption. After years and years of brutal killings, the practice will end. I hope you will all agree that this is the only solution they could have come to. Thank you, Fish and Game commissioners for finally doing the right thing. And thanks to Eric Mills for fighting so hard for so many years to make it happen. Was it worth all of the aggravation and stress? YES!! When the current permits run out, no new ones will be issued. On a related matter, there was also some talk of banning the turtles and frogs from pet shops but that hasn't happened and I really can't foresee this happening either. Most conscientious pet owners don't throw their turtles into the river when they tire of them. But the ones in the markets have been released because people feel sorry for them.

SEE YOU AT THE MEETING -
PLEASE SIGN UP FOR THE TURTLERAMA!

Summer Hints: I have a feeling that summer will be brief - so do your best to keep your critters healthy by giving them the right food for the species and the right amount of humidity as well. Your box turtles need a moist environment so try not to house them with dry desert species. They shouldn't be mixed together in the first place but I know many of us lose control because the tortoises and bhox turtles simply go wherever they want to be even if they have to climb and dig to get there. Hopefully, not out of the yard!! Keep things cleaned up; nails, hair, fur, rubber bands, baggie ties, little white rocks the tortoisees love to eat, glass, plastic bags...all pose a threat to our pets who eat anything when the temperature rises, especially the Sulcatas.

Please try to help or exhibit at the Turtlerama. I was a little disappointed last year because there weren't too many species on display. But the ones who were there were great. We still have our work cut out for us. The mis-information is everywhere and if we can save lives and make others more comfortable, we have done our job. Thanks in advance. If you won't be at the Summer meeting, please contact me with your plans to exhibit or help.

In our last newsletter, I mentioned how severe the winter had been, however, little did I know that it would continue on until the beginning of June!! I had taken the tortoises out of the greenhouse and had to round them up again when the weather went back into the low 40's. This happened three times. I don't recall ever doing this before. Once they were out, they were out for the summer and years ago, it would happen as early as February. NO MORE!! The tortoises were not happy being cooped up again and let their annoyance be known by depositing 'you know what' everywhere and in abundance! What can I say? It's all part of 'captive husbandry'.

Several years ago, my Memorial Day BBQ was ruined by Chester, the ancient Elongated tortoise, coming by to inspect the guests and leaving something behind. This year I decided to do another BBQ but let the guests stay in the house since the back yard was not yet ready for company. Speedy, the leopard tortoise, was visiting again while her owners were on vacation. Bill (hubby) was helping me cook and out of the corner of my eye I could see something coming at us at high speed. It was Speedy, living up to her name, with Just James, who bites ankles, in hot pursuit. He is much younger than Tarzan and can keep up with her and luckily, when things began to happen on the patio, our food was cooked and we quickly brought it in and closed the door.........As most of you know, Bill is not a tortoise fan and I try to shield him from any and all activity going on in the back yard. From now on, I'll do the outdoor cooking by myself.

Shirley Waterman's desert tortoise, Tiny, lost her vision a few years ago and Shirley has been patiently popping food into Tiny's mouth daily and when Shirley went out of town for a few days to attend her granddaughter's graduation, Tiny came to my house so I could continue to feed her. I'm happy to say that for some reason, Tiny has begun feeding on her own. Perhaps her eyesight is returning? Or her sense of smell is hightened? Tortoises are such a mystery all of the time.

The saga continues on here At The Bunker with Just Jim being the bully and all other creatures, his victims, so he is now living with the box turtles for the summer months. Fat Betty is in there too but he doesn't bother her, however, the other day, instead of tending to forecasting the weather, she was laying eggs and I was keeping an eye on things. I had to come into the house for a few minutes and when I came back outside, a box turtle had come by and knocked her off of the nest and broke the eggs.

News has come to me that some folks at the Butte College have been removing red eared sliders from various waterways and in order to get rid of them, simply put them in boxes and FREEZE THEM TO DEATH. Umm, something stinks here. Years ago, freezing was an acceptable method of euthanasia for very sick turtles and tortoises to end their suffering, but certainly not for healthy thriving, active turtles. Articles have been published regarding this practice and how painful it is to freeze to death. As I said to Michael Rajkumar, 'Maybe the turtles butchered in the markets are the lucky ones???'

Why are the sliders being removed? In light of severe budget cuts, who is funding that project? Are the sliders displacing the native pond turtles? Studies have not been conclusive. The pond turtles are a 'species of special concern' with no restrictions except for the fact that the F&G is asking people to return them to the wild if they find them wandering about. I would say that human encroachment on their native habitat would do more harm than some sliders.

What kind of vet tells their client that their common three toed box turtle is an ALDABRA TORTOISE?? And with this information, the woman put it up on Craigslist!!! Why would a pet shop employee tell a customer to keep her baby Sulcata at 110 degrees during the day and go down to 95 at night????? The poor creature after three years of this is only three inches long and totally deformed. I beg you all to stop believing everything you read on the Internet. It's the WORST SOURCE OF INFORMATION. The best source are the turtle club care sheets for the area in which you LIVE!!!

UPCOMING EVENTS:

AUGUST 21st TURTLERAMA 11-4 Belle Cooledge Library (library opens at 9 if you want to set up earlier)

OCTOBER 23rd - Fall Meeting 1:30 - 4