Where Socks Go

For Christmas I don't ask for big ticket items like a new car or a food processor or a TV. I like getting a lot of small silly items. Greg has adapted to my preference for cute little gifts. This year he got me a sign that said "Beware of Attack Tortoise", a set of little plastic turtle figurines, a small frog flashlight, a pack of Christmas pencils, and two pairs of socks:  gecko socks and a beautiful pair of socks featuring Laurel Burch cats. Yep, I am easy to please.

A pair of fun socks for Christmas is a tradition for us. Greg really has to scavenge around to find just the right ones. I know he mail ordered the gecko socks and he found the cat socks locally. He remembered how much I like Laurel Birtch cat designs. He did great because I love my cat socks!

....but I am sidetracked a bit.

The other night we were watching Modern Marvels on TV and it featured underwear manufacturing. They did a bit about socks. It was mentioned that the sock company, despite lots of research, could not explain what happens to socks that go into a washer machine but never emerge from the dryer.  It's a big mystery.

But I know.

Yesterday the morning was cold but we had sun thus it could warm up before it plunged into the twenties that night. Frankie, who slept the night in the gecko room, was interested in going out.

I predicted Frankie would not get past the gecko room door or just go outside long enough for a couple of bites of grass. I escorted Frankie from the gecko room through the garage and opened the back door. He stopped inside the open back door, noticed the cold temperature and refused to go farther. He was not going outside. Frankie was contented to sit inside and look outside.  I left him there and returned to the gecko room to carry on daily chores.

I am smart enough not to leave a large sulcata unsupervised for any length of time in a garage full of potentially dangerous items. Since he seemed content to just sit at the door I decide it was safe to let him sit there if I returned every five minutes or so to checked on him.

At the end of five minutes I return to the garage and find no Frankie at the back door. Instead I find him next to the washer machine eating something. You guessed it -- Frankie is eating one of my lovely Laurel Burch cat socks.

I grab the end of the sock that Frankie has not yet eaten and begin the process of slowly pulling the sock out of his mouth (retrieving items from turtle mouths is a basic keeper skill). When the sulcata opens his mouth to chew you tug a bit of the item out of his mouth. It may take a few minutes to get the whole object out so keepers must be patient.

I manage to retrieve the whole sock intact. Frankie returned to the gecko room where a pile of wet soggy hay awaits him.

Absolutely this is a very dangerous event! This is a potential veterinarian visit which means picking up the monster, putting him in the car, and a possible very expensive surgery to removed a impacted object from the digestive track. This is why sulcata owners regularly walk around their property checking for dangerous items, supervise their sulcata when they are in new places, and never never leave a sulcata alone with socks.

Missing any socks?

Hay to success

After more than three years of struggle, dozens of wasted bags and bails of hay, allergy attacks, and one starving tortoise I am happy to report that I have finally succeeded in getting Frankie to eat hay as a primary food source. Boy am I tired. This has not been an easy road to go.

Tough love failed to get Frankie to eat hay last winter. He simply went without food, his immune system slowed and he caught a upper respiratory infection. Caught early I was saved having to needle inject him with antibodies. Anyone with a ten pound or heavier sulcata can attest that this is a job for superman. Prevention is key to avoiding this impossible task. Food is necessary.

The sneaking favorite snacks into a pile of hay resulted in Frankie learning to shift through hay with his nose to get to the tasty tidbits. Occasionally he would eat hay: One bit of hay would sneak past that talented nose of his and ta-daa hay eaten. Chopping favorite foods in to itty-bitty pieces and mixing into the hay was only slightly more successful. The best results were feeding the itty-bitty favorite finely diced items mixed well with hay to a completely starving sulcata. It was the most I ever saw him eat hay. The result was a slimmer cranky Frankie. Not a good route.

My friends on Sulcata Station Yahoo Group were encouraging Frankie's conversion to hay. Lots and lots of advise about hay preparation has waffled in and out of my brain. I would wonder daily which trick would work. I mean this sulcata is getting BIG and winters have a huge effect on available grass outside. Its easy to pick grass and weed for a twenty pound sulcata. But for a fifty pound sulcata there just isn't enough live material outside to feed him. Advise kept coming in.

It was mentioned that the best results came when hay was soaked in hot, hot water for five to ten minutes. With nothing to loose, I tried it.

So I present Frankie of pile of steaming hot, wet, droopy hay. And he eats it. I think I stood there for about two minutes not believing he was actually eating hay. Okay, so I give it another. First time is beginners luck (I mean the sulcata is hungry), but a second time shows some kind of learning going on. Day two. Present Frankie with another pile of steaming hot wet droopy hay. And he eats it.

Its been several weeks now and I have bought my third big bag of dry hay from Petco. I am actually using the gift card Frankie won from the costume contest. Double plus: no cost and fed a Frankie.

Frankie is happy. He gets to eat even when its 15º degrees outside and mommy will not go out and pick grass. Mommy is happy because she can prepare Frankie his breakfast in her nighties instead of getting completely dressed at 6:00 in the morning with coat and hat and gloves and scavenge the neighborhood for enough grass to feed a fifty-six pound sulcata. My neighbors think I am nuts.

Is there a bad angle to this? Hmm. Yes, I will now have to pay to feed an animal who is perfectly contented to eat free food growing in the yard. My Frankie food budget of $15 per month for carrots, cuttlebone, and vitamin supplements will now go up, up, up. Do you know how much hay a 56 pound sulcata can eat? A lot.

A very valuable keeper skill

People who keep reptiles embody special skills that go completely unappreciated by the public. For instance, as a keeper of well over 200 rare geckos I am capable of really astonishing things. I can manipulate the sexual outcome of a gecko egg by a turn of a temperature gage and a tweak of a humidifier. I can tell you the food preference of well over a thousand reptile species. I can identify a poop on my gecko room wall and tell you which gecko species has breached its enclosure, what its last meal was and in what direction it is traveling. I can identify where that gecko is most likely hiding and catch it without the gecko loosing its tail or some of its skin.

Remarkable stuff. But even more spectacular I can wrangle two thousand crickets. Let me explain.

My dear 56 pound sulcata tortoise Frankie has learned that as a bigger tortoise he can communicate with a greater degree of accuracy than ever before in his life. When he was only six ounces big, he could look me straight in the eye hoping desperately that I get the message he is very hungry. As a human I interpret incorrectly.

"Gosh darn. You are just the cutest tortoise in the world and by the way you are looking at me I know you just love your mommy!".

"Yea right," Frankie is thinking, "Feed me you big stupid human. I'm starving down here."

It's just not easy for tortoises to communicate to humans. We reptile keeping humans are looking for biological cues: smacking the jaws, looking at the feeding dish, eating newspaper. Anything beyond that and we are thinking the cute little thing loves us.

Frankie is getting bigger and more clever.

He learned that at 6 ounces, sitting by the door meant nothing to me. At 56 pounds, ramming his shell against the door means "Let me outside NOW!" I have learned that lesson.

But what is a sulcata to do when Mommy is in the next room?

Answer: Get her attention.

So yesterday, Frankie did.

"Hmm," says Frankie, "Two full containers of crickets sitting on a not-so sturdy wooden box. I think I will just turn these over and see if Mom in the next room gets the message." CRASH!

I dash into the room to investigate an unmistakable loud noise only to be greeted by 2,000 crickets scurrying across the floor. OMG it's a cricket catastrophe!

There is no getting around the fact that this will take every bit of reptile skills I have to contain this....and get Frankie outside -- oh, yes, I get THAT message.

Now here is where unusual reptile keeping skills come in....cricket wrangling. Step into the room without crunching to death ten crickets with every step. Pick up 2,000 crickets without smashing them. Prevent any from escaping into the stairwell. Employ several techniques to corral them into containers. Pick up crickets by the handful. Identify cricket favorite hiding areas and employ live-traps. Use all my only-a-reptile-keeper-would-know skills.

It takes me two hours.

This morning there are about 50 left on the floor. More near the normal number loose crickets for a typical gecko room.

The really, really down point about this whole event is not the unavoidable loss of maybe 100 crickets (feet, etc.) but that Frankie has learned a really valuable lesson on how to get my attention -- it involves a big crash. This is not good at all.