Dear Members and Friends:

Our Summer meeting will be held on Saturday, July 20 from 1:30 until 4 at the Belle Cooledge Library, 5600 South Land Park Drive, 95822. Seasonal topies will be discussed such as egg laying, incubation of the eggs, should you leave them in the ground or dig them up, etc. etc. and feeding problems and what to do with the babies when they hatch, what do you feed hatchling tortoises and turtles, and I'm sure we'll have lots of input on these and many other topics. Thanks to our busy Facebook page, I feel as if I am writing a newsletter all day, every day and I urge those who don't like Facebook to consider joining our page. It's well worth your time to be involved. Every topic is out in the open, discussed, argued and resolved, but not always. "The Internet" will always be the enemy of turtles and tortoises. Those with experience have to tell others what is right, what is wrong and what is deadly. We have our work cut out for us.

You are always welcome to bring a pet or two to the meeting for Show and Tell. I brought Valentino to the last meeting. He is about 8 years old now and was one of the leopard tortoise hatchlings a member had bought from me and recently returned for personal reasons. I guess he was kept in an aquarium even though aquariums are for FISH and is SO deformed with his body much larger than his unique shell. Whenever this happens, they are very vulnerable to predators and cannot retract their limbs head or tail into the safety of the shell. So they need extra protection outdoors. He reminds me of the Hunchback of Notre Dame, but with a very sweet face and 'pleading for food' eyes.

Meanwhile, 4 weeks after the meeting is the TURTLERAMA! Are you ready? I'll have the sign-up sheet at the meeting and if you can't make it to the meeting, please email me to let me know if you will be able to exhibit, what you will exhibit, how much space you will need OR if you are willing to be there to help the exhibitors. A cleanup crew around 4PM will be greatly appreciated.!!

SEE YOU AT THE MEETING!!!
IMPROMPTU SPEAKERS ALWAYS WELCOME!!

SUMMER HINTS

Make sure there is lots of shade available for your pets. If you need to go away for the day, you might want to put some of them in the house for safety. Accidents happen, fighting happens, upside down happens, being strangled on long strands of Bermuda grass happens. Poisoned rats end up in your vard and can be eaten. Patrol often looking for holes under the fence because if your friends can see out they will forever try to get out and they will succeed!! And they are amazing climbers and will scale your woodpile to escape. Clean up the little white rocks, bits of plastic, fur from your dog or cat or any object that might be mistaken for food like shiny pieces of glass. (I baby sat with a Sulcata and I was amazed at the glass and plastic that came out of his butt!) I told the gentleman to clean up his yard. Never let your guard down. I know you all do your best, and sometimes even our best isn't enough.

Have a GREAT SUMMER EVERYONE!

It's been pretty lively here since the warm weather returned. It did take awhile before all of the residents of The Bunker reappeared and there were very few, if any, casualties and I had plenty of winter 'guests' whom I worried about hoping there would be no 'visitors in the night'. Luckily, 'they' have not been around for a long time. Most of the 'guests' are back home giving my own tortoises more room to roam and to, hopefully, lay some eggs this year. Some of the box turtles decided to climb out of the pen and dig their nests in the lawn. I made the big mistake of trying to dig them up and had to quit after finding the first nest and immediately breaking two of the eggs.....So now I have 4 or 5 nests in the lawn and have my fingers crossed for their future which could be bleak! I tried to 'mark' the nests but nothing seemed to work and I almost fell over one of the markers, so that was that.

One of the male box turtles who has decided to leave the enclosure has fallen in love with Blondie, the 30 lb. leopard tortoise. I'm not exactly sure what the attraction is, Blondie ignores his attempts to mate yet he persists. Maybe like humans, some turtles prefer small partners and others prefer XXL??? I don't interfere. To cach his own!! I scratch my head, smile, and walk away.

I haven't mentioned some of the residents in awhile so here goes: Fat Betty retired from Meteorology some time ago and chooses a more leisurely lifestyle now, rising well after sunrise and going to sleep before the sun sets. She is still single, I'm sorry to say. Blondie and Tarzan, the leopards, are doing quite well and have been since the early 1980's. Blondie produces a total of 30 eggs a year divided between August. September, and October. So they begin hatching at the end of December. Chester, the ancient Elongata, is not showing any signs of slowing down. Any newcomer is chased and rammed to show that he is the boss!! Harold Carty had handed me a newborn Eastern Redbelly turtle at least 16 years ago and that little guy is HUGE now and so black with a red plastron. A little girl visiting here named him "Licorice" which is perfect.

Just Jim Jr. (Greek) is slowing down, only checking out new residents and guests and not being nasty at all. But that could change at any moment. He and Suzie have no interest in one another so there are no children. Ma and Pa are a very old couple (Hermann's) and last year Pa began cheating with Claudia. They do have a child, a girl I believe, but there has been no recognition of each other since last spring. I guess he decided to give him original partner of many years, perhaps 40 or more, all of his attention as they age and not chase after the teenager!! Darwin, the injured Leopard (raccoon attack 2 years ago), continues to heal very nicely. Otis, the slider missing his paws thanks to a raccoon in his owner's pond, is very fiesty and telling me he wants to be in the pond. Who knows, I may put him there to enjoy life as a turtle and not a patient. And that is part of life At The Bunker ...