EDMONTON JOURNAL (Alberta) 22 August 06 Daring daytime pet store thieves picking up valuable exotic reptiles: Tortoises can die without special diet and housing, shop manager warns (Lindsey Norris)
Edmonton: Of all the animals likely to go missing, you wouldn't think the slow-moving tortoise would be one of them.
But someone stole two valuable tortoises from two different pet stores over the weekend.
"I was in the back cutting up the veggies for him, and when I came out it was pretty busy, and there was no tortoise," said Chris Ewing, the employee responsible for looking after the tortoise at PJ's Pet Centre in Londonderry Mall on Sunday.
Ewing thinks the $800 African spur thigh tortoise was stolen at about 1 p.m.
Ewing said the tortoise, which can live for more than 75 years and can weigh 45 kilograms, was two to three months old and the size of someone's palm.
A leopard tortoise, which was about a year-and-a-half-old and 15 centimetres long, was stolen from PJ's Pet Centre in West Edmonton Mall on Saturday. The leopard tortoise can grow to weigh up to 23 kilograms and live for more than 50 years.
"A leopard tortoise is $900," said Jodi Hendrickson, manager at PJ's Pet Centre at West Edmonton Mall.
"Someone thinks it's cool, they want it, and may not have the money. But any exotic species, unless you've done the research, you don't know how to take care of them, and if they can't afford the turtle, it's doubtful they can afford the housing environment."
In general, tortoises live on land and eat a primarily vegetarian diet, and turtles live in or near the water and eat a meat-based diet or a combination of meat and vegetation.
"When they're smaller they're OK in a glass terrarium, but as they grow older they need their own temperature-controlled room," Hendrickson says.
"They have special dietary needs. They will eat leafy greens, but not just lettuce. Lighting and proper heating are very important. Unfortunately they don't show when they're sick until it's really far gone -- they have amazing capability of holding that in."
Ewing said a snake was also stolen about two months ago from the Londonderry Mall, and Hendrickson said a French bull dog was stolen a month ago from the West Edmonton Mall location.
A manager at the Evolution of Pets store said a group of African side neck turtles were stolen in December.
"These animals are going, but we don't know where they're going to," Hendrickson said.
Herbie, one of the only marginated tortoises in North America, was stolen from the Greater Vancouver Zoo in Aldergrove in June 2005 when someone broke into its locked enclosure in the middle of the night.
"A lot of these species are illegally smuggled into the country, so there is a demand for them," said Jamie Dorgan, the animal care manager at the Greater Vancouver Zoo.
"A lot of them are threatened because people are snatching them from their natural environment illegally to sell them.
"People may think they want a reptile, but they're all quite demanding.
Exotic animals do not make good pets, and most people should get a dog or cat."