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Gridlock
Posted by: Chris Clarke
Note: A database glitch in 2008 ate a bunch of archived comments. Don't be offended if yours isn't here, or confused if the conversation seems disjointed. Thanks!
Or would be gridlock, if they were interested in going anywhere.
Turtlenerds need info: Where was this shot? Assuming California, are those native Clemmys or invasive sliders (Trachemys)? I can’t zoom in enough to answer it myself, but I fear the latter. Which brings me back to the Where? question.
By: By Sven DiMilo on 2008 04 01
Evil invasive red-eared sliders, Quarry Pond, near the Conservatory of Flowers, Golden Gate Park.
By: By Chris Clarke on 2008 04 01
Yeah, thought so.
These little bastards are now permanent residents around the world; in Australia they’re treated like snakeheads or brown treesnakes.
Sing along with me now: Boooooorn freeeeeeeee…
By: By Sven DiMilo on 2008 04 01
Hey, there they are!
Wait, that sounded like - I just meant Chris told me about this picture. They’re not MY turtles. Really.
By: By Theriomorph on 2008 04 01
It’s turtles all the way down!
By: By Hank Fox on 2008 04 01
I am a non-turtlenerd, so what makes these guys evil? Please to explain.
By: By Charles on 2008 04 02
I’m not precisely sure, Charles, but it has to do with invasive species and I think we’d better blame the cat while we wait for the full story.
By: By Theriomorph on 2008 04 02
I just have a soft spot (hah!) for turtles in general. Years ago my spouse and I were having a late-night moment (OK, a lot more than just a moment) of marital conflict. In mid-“discussion” we were interrupted by loud scratching and knocking, seemingly at the front door. We looked and found that the noise was being caused by a very large turtle. He (she?) apparently was confused by the window on the side of our front door and was trying to go through our house. So we got some heavy gloves (that mouth looked like it could have bitten a finger clean off), put him in the recycling bin, and took him back to the pond on the other side of the street—hoping as we did that the neighbors wouldn’t wake up to find us traipsing through their backyards. By the time we finished that we had completely forgotten the stupid issue that caused the argument in the first place.
By: By Charles on 2008 04 02
Aw. Good turtle.
Snappernalia here.
[Looking at the dates of the two posts, it occurs to me I run into these big ‘uns in June, often. Mating season travels? The turtlenerds will know.]
By: By Theriomorph on 2008 04 02
The Theriomorph is correct, a sentence we would all do well to apply in just about any context we encounter.
Red-eared sliders are one of those Monterey Pine species (or rainbow trout, for that matter) in big trouble in their home ranges and invasive outside it.
Sven almost certainly has more detailed information that I do, but it is my impression that the impact of sliders, in California, is essentially the physical displacement of native species, specifically the Western Pond Turtle, so named for its tendency to live in Western Ponds.
I further understand that the slider wouldn’t be nearly the ecological issue it is were it not for the fact that baby sliders are bred by the kajillion for the pet trade, and are routinely “freed” by well meaning mopes, a fact that I expect prompted Sven’s above Joy Adamson reference, which likely brought The Theriomorph here as if Sven had blown a whistle only lionesses can hear.
By: By Chris Clarke on 2008 04 02
Also, in the Antipodes, blaming the cat is a highly developed pastime. Reading Kiwi enviro mags for a living as I did the past decade or so, I was impressed by the vigour [sic] with which they explicitly talk about feral cat eradication from wildlands. The same folk who release sliders into Western Ponds phoned in death threats when I even mentioned the topic of cat predation at all.
By: By Chris Clarke on 2008 04 02
The Theriomorph is correct, a sentence we would all do well to apply in just about any context we encounter.
This is what is known as an ill-advised ‘free pass.’
As if to illustrate, a further off-thread turtlenerd question, if Sven comes back or anyone else knows: what amphibian would be lurking in ponds of western Massachusetts a couple of years ago, looking an awful lot like a painted turtle in size, but with a dark, solid shell and electric blue bands around its neck instead of the red lateral streaks by the eyes?
By: By Theriomorph on 2008 04 02
Great story, T—ours was a lot calmer than yours. We had no hissing, no snapping and no baleful looks -=- but he did try to climb out of the recycling bin and almost . When we let him go, he just ambled away.
Thanks for the explanation, Chris.
By: By Charles on 2008 04 02
As if to illustrate…
If it’s an amphibian, you should alert the media.
But I know you did that on purpose just to take me and my base flattery down a peg, Coyote-style.
By: By Chris Clarke on 2008 04 02
Oops, goofy posting there, and I’m not logged in so I can’t edit. I meant to say he almost got out.
By: By Charles on 2008 04 02
Well, I yield to nobody in my personal affection for all things chelonian, and I’ve even studied red-eared sliders (RES) in their natural habitat (the southern Mississippi drainage), incubated their eggs in the lab, etc. But.
What makes RESs “evil” is the fact that (obviously through no fault of their own), they have been sold all over the world by the billions, literally, in the pet trade (sad history of greed here). If you’re old enough to remember, they’re the bright-green half-dollar-sized little guys with the bright red blotch on the side of the head that they used to sell at Woolworth’s along with the little plastic pond with an island and a little plastic palm tree in the middle.
As hatchlings they’re just as cute as hell, but the minority that don’t succumb within a couple of months to cold and a diet of iceberg lettuce and raw hamburger grow. And grow. An adult is about the size of a dinner plate, usually has a nasty disposition, and stinks. So people don’t want their not-so-cute and not-so-little pets anymore and do what they think is the humane thing, releasing them into some local body of water (e.g. Golden Gate Park).
It turns out that RESs are the weeds of the turtle order, with very flexible habitat requirements, a catholic diet, and high tolerance to habitat variability. In many, many places they do fine in their new home, grow, and reproduce.
They are an invasive species, with established and reproducing populations now known from much of the USA (see map here, probably the tip of the iceberg), plus Europe (Spain, Italy), Australia, and East Asia.
They can outcompete local native species, alter ecosystems, etc. Lots of information here.
jeez, must have pushed one of my buttons…
By: By Sven DiMilo on 2008 04 02
SEE? Free pass. Ill advised.
Was thinking amphibious in the poetic sense, and blundered into moronitude. Reptilian. Reptilian. My biologist friends all just disowned me. I still wanna know about the blue-banded lovely pond-hopping in Satan’s Kingdom, though. Probably another invasive.
By: By Theriomorph on 2008 04 02
The RESes in Ron Sullivan’s living room have a recovering Catholic diet.
By: By Chris Clarke on 2008 04 02
Follow-up:
Yes, all large snapping turtles encountered on land, especially in June, are females on nesting excursions. Some will walk ridiculous distances to find just the right spot (which to me always looks like every other spot for about a hhalf-mile radius, but they seemingly know something I don’t).
A turtle with electric-blue neck bands??? No such thing, to my (pretty extensive on this particular subject) knowledge. A basking turtle in western Mass. is almost certainly a painted turtle (their shells can get quite dark), but could also be a spotted or wood turtle. No blue. If this was a single individual, I fear it got itself into some plastic. A Wal-Mart bag, for example. (p.s. usually no red on the heads of painted turtles…you may have SLIDERS).
By: By Sven DiMilo on 2008 04 02
Huh. Thanks, Sven - didn’t get a super-close-up look, but did see a clear electric blue band. I wonder if someone from the wildlife management area crew put a blue tracking collar on a painted turtle? Probably wishful thinking.
Here’s the red I was thinking of on the eastern painted turtles - more on the neck than by the eyes. But comparing the photos to the RES, I’m sure I’ve run into both.
By: By Theriomorph on 2008 04 02
Sven
If memory serves, the turtle that was trying to get into our house was out and about in the fall (I’ll have to check the file on the digital picture we took to be sure). Maybe looking for a good place to spend the winter?
By: By Charles on 2008 04 02
Charles—could be. Snappers hibernate underwater, and some probably migrate from good feeding areas to better hibernating sites.
By: By Sven DiMilo on 2008 04 02
i don’t think you can blame the cats for this one. and since i’ve got two adopted feral kitties in residence—and all cats in residence are fixed—i’m just poking my fingers in my ears and singing lalalala while you all talk about the evils of cats.
but—i remember those little woolworth’s turtles. my parents pet-sat a couple of them once, while babysitting their junior owner, and the turtles escaped their habitat and disappeared. they were found 1-2 months later, having apparently found sustenance under my parents’ bed. i don’t even want to get into why the underside of my parents’ bed might have provided a viable habitat, but i guess this is testimony to the hardiness of the species.
By: By kathy a on 2008 04 02
I BLAME THE CATRIARCHY!
By: By Chris Clarke on 2008 04 02
i’m just poking my fingers in my ears and singing lalalala while you all talk about the evils of cats.
I’m with you, kathy, in spite of channeling Gilly’s blaming habits for a minute there - he always blames Mandala for everything, but I’m always on the side of the feral felines, whom we are responsible for, and who repay every spaying and neutering and responsible bit of care with abundant goodness and ferocity.
By: By Theriomorph on 2008 04 02
oooh, t-morph—we once fostered 3 babies who could have come from the same litter as mandala. my son’s true love adopted one. our hero, the cat rescue lady, never adopts out black cats anytime near halloween.
<<cough>> but anyway, this seems as good a time as any to point out that turtles have instincts and shells, and those are confounding to cats. when we lived in charleston, s.c., all kinds of wildlife used to run across the yard. our cat fred, the huntress, once spent a hilarious couple of hours stalking a turtle across the yard. the turtle would bolt a couple of inches; the cat would pounce; the turtle’s outer parts retracted. rinse and repeat. the turtle eventually won, lurching off for freedom once the cat got hungry and went inside.
By: By kathy a on 2008 04 02
Hate to break up the party here, but I have to say that you feral-cat fans really bother me. A lot.
By: By Sven DiMilo on 2008 04 02
We can have the feral cat discussion in a constructive, non-personalized fashion, in a manner that recognizes that people can have good, valid reasons for differing, and in so doing maintain the level of respect and collegiality people have come to expect here, or I can close the thread.
I’m saying this as someone whose opinions on feral cat management have traditionally been pretty close to what Sven’s seem to be.
But I won’t have “you people”-style arguing here.
By: By Chris Clarke on 2008 04 02
and if that seems a heavyhanded response, I’ll just say I have Been Here Before.
By: By Chris Clarke on 2008 04 02
if it helps set the record straight—i’m all for the prevention of feral cats. just a sucker for rescued kittens, and all the ones i know now are both sterile and housebound.
By: By kathy a on 2008 04 02
Also for humane feral cat prevention.
By: By Theriomorph on 2008 04 02
well, this post started on invasive turtles, and now i’ve been back-reading feral cat posts.
our cat rescue lady let my daughter foster many batches of rescue kittens, so they would become adoptable. and they all did find careers as house cats—all except the two i took in to foster after daughter left for college.
those two were older than the others, more set in their feral ways. i fostered them from october to january, and they still weren’t human-friendly enough for adoption. oh, they were happy as could be with the house, the food, the comfy places to rest and play—they just hissed and scratched if someone tried to pet them.
these babies were not going back to a feral colony. instead, i just adopted them. i’m wearing them down. one will let me pet him now, if he is in his happy place and snuggling with a senior cat. progress, i tell you.
By: By kathy a on 2008 04 02
Sincere apologies to all.
I didn’t need to say that, shouldn’t have, and if my time machine was working I’d go back and shut up.
You people are all fine by me despite our differences, and I mean that.
By: By Sven DIMilo on 2008 04 03
Thanks, Sven. You’re a good guy.
By: By Chris Clarke on 2008 04 03
Late to this, but Sven DiMilo brought up the point of sliders’ often demise as pets. I mentioned on DeepSeaNews that I “babysat” (meaning house-sat by living there for two or so weeks at a time) a slider for seven years along with a cat and dog.
The slider was acquired through a pet store in 1966 and they kept him in a fish tank in their large kitchen. I know Fred (the turtle) lived for over 26 years. He had his own biologist doctor and given that these pets don’t make it he was unusual.
I could take him out, feed him lettuce, hamburger meat, worms or such. One thing I wasn’t sure about was when I put him on the floor he immediately scurried over to the fridge at least 10 feet away. He could see the fridge from his tank: could he really see that’s where his food came from? Was it the warm air coming out of the bottom of the fridge? Was it the hum of the fridge? I’m not sure why he did this and maybe Sven would know.
He wasn’t aggressive and he made a good paperweight. (; I thought the regular-sized fish tank was too small and boring, but he did live long. (The people moved to Sanibel so I don’t know if and when he died. ~30 years was what was estimated by his doctor).
Fred’s shell was nearly 8 inches long and 5 inches across. When he wanted food he would paddle frantically when you approached the tank.
By: By Melusine on 2008 04 05
