THE GUARDIAN (Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island) 29 March 08 Finding Norbert - Since he was found in Summerside four years ago, Norbert the abandoned wood turtle has enjoyed his free daytime reign and range in one department of the Atlantic Veterinary College in Charlottetown (Mary MacKay)
Ah, the life of Norbert.
After all, not every wood turtle has free reign and range of an entire department at the Atlantic Veterinary College (AVC) in Charlottetown, dines royally on finely diced foods and celebrates celebrity status among students, staff and visitors alike.
“He’s quite a star around here,” AVC animal resources technician Angie Harnish says of Norbert, who is of the Clemmys insculpta of semi-aquatic wood turtle kind.
“I’ll be sitting at my desk at the end of the day and the students will walk by (his cage) and say, ‘Hi, Norbert!’ People will stop and talk to him. And I’m not talking just students either, it’s professors and researchers. Everybody stops by and knows him by name and says hello.”
Norbert is by no means an introverted turtle with his head and legs withdrawn from the world. Instead he’s always on the ready to run in his ungainly turtle-style gait. In fact, if he’s held too long, his legs kick into motion, signaling that it’s time to get down and go.
“These turtles would normally walk several kilometres a day so we let him get his exercise to stimulate his appetite and good health,” says his guardian, Wayne Petley, manager of the Animal Resources Department at the AVC.
Although P.E.I.’s wilds are wood turtle-less, these shelled reptiles do call New Brunswick and Nova Scotia home, where they are a protected species.
Despite Norbert’s ability to move pretty darned quick when he wants to, it isn’t likely that he crossed on his own four feet to P.E.I. via the great Confederation Bridge divide.
Instead Fisheries and Oceans personnel retrieved him from a front lawn of a Summerside home about four years ago. Petley suspects he was taken from the wild and subsequently let go here.
Because Norbert’s history was unknown — how long ago that he was captured or how reliant upon humans he was — he was taken into the AVC’s orphaned turtles fold instead of being reintroduced to the wild.
Norbert is a typical 12-year-old. He has plenty of energy to burn and is bursting with boundless curiosity.
“This sort of species is known to be the smartest of the turtles,” Petley says.
“So this turtle can compete with a lab rat in terms of intelligence.”
The proof is in the path that Norbert plots each day. Instead of wandering aimlessly down the corridor, he usually bypasses a myriad of doors in a beeline for the lab that houses an electron microscope, his utmost favourite dark, warm hidey-hole.
“He has about 10 of his favourite hiding spots that we all spend 10 minutes on our hands and knees looking for him in around 4:15 (p.m.) every day,” says Lee Dawson, a technologist with AVC’s Animal Resources Department.
“Anywhere dark and hidden away – the darkest, farthest part of this place is where you’ll find Norbert.”
When one AVC staffer was gone for a month, the lab door was shut, causing Norbert some serious consternation.
“We’d let him go down the hall and he’d sit outside the door with his head looking up at the window. And he’d sit like that for hour, looking like ‘OK, come on. Open the door. I’m going to sit here till you open the door,’ “ Harnish says, laughing.
“He was beside himself because he couldn’t get in.”
Despite constantly being underfoot, Norbert hasn’t been stepped on or caught in a closing door. Just to give passers-through a heads up about the wee creature underfoot, there are signs advising people to “Please keep doors closed. Wood turtle exercising in this corridor.”
“Every so often someone will say, ‘Do you know there’s a turtle on the loose out here?’ ” Dawson adds with a smile.
Norbert is footloose and fancy free all day, but it’s turtle roundup time every day at work’s end. More often than not it’s just a matter of checking Norbert’s favourite spots but sometimes he’s MIA.
“He’s gone astray sometimes. We’ve had incidents where we’ve had to have UPEI security help us because if somebody leaves a door open, he’ll wander down the halls,” Petley says.
“Some of us were a bit stressed to make sure that he was back in his home for the night with his food . . . . We’ve had some late nights until we found him.”
Norbert eats meat, but his main diet consists of fruits and vegetables.
“They’re called opportunistic omnivores, so they’ll eat just about anything that comes along,” Petley says.
“So in the wild he would probably eat insects, small frogs maybe, whatever he can catch, some vegetation, some berries.”
Feeding time for Norbert at the AVC is like the Turtle Hotel Ritz. He is served the best cat food available for his protein requirements, and the rest of his diet is comprised of whatever berries are in season, especially strawberries, as well as melons, lettuce, tomatoes and more.
“We’ve got him a bit spoiled really,” Harnish says. “In the wild, he’d have to eat a strawberry whole, but we cut it up. I’m bad. I cut it up in teeny little pieces and I’ll shred the lettuce into little bits . . . .
“If I feed him, the next morning most of his food will be gone, but if (someone else) is in a rush and it’s not ripped up good enough, he won’t eat it . . . . In that way, he does have a personality.”
There’s only one thing lacking in this turtle utopia.
“That’s right, there is no Mrs. (Norbert),” Petley says.
There is, however, a small population of other orphaned turtles being housed at the AVC, but their species is almost completely aquatic so they spend all their time in an aquarium.
It might seem that Norbert is living the free life, but he does provide a service for his keep.
“Not only is he a great teaching model for AVC students, he is also a major mascot, especially during open house day and summer vet camps for children.
“In an institute like this where (the students are) learning about all kinds of animals, to have these are really, really valuable because a lot of people have never even come close,” Petley says.
“The children, when they come here for the open house, are just floored. They’ve never seen anything like it.”
In terms of longevity, Norbert could outlast most of the AVC staff’s career span but there’s no fear of him not faring well with the next generation.
“He is as affectionate as a turtle goes but not a cuddly pet,” Petley says.
“They have personalities, especially this species . . . . They all have a little bit of a personality.”
Think carefully before bringing home a turtle
Choosing a turtle as a pet is a decision people should weigh heavily before taking the plunge.
Like other exotic animals, turtles require specialized dietary, housing and medical needs.
“I think the biggest issue with the turtle trade, people don’t realize how long they live,” says Wayne Petley, manager of the aquatic facility at the Atlantic Veterinary College (AVC) in Charlottetown.
For example, Norbert, a rescued wood turtle who now lives at the AVC, could live up to 50 years in the wild and even longer in captivity.
“If you have a pet that lives over 30 to 50 years, kids grow up, they move away and parents usually end up with the turtle.
“And that’s usually the case of orphans being dropped off,” Petley.
“So it’s a long-lived animal and they grow. They don’t stay little.”
However, in the case of Norbert, who is a semi-aquatic wood turtle native to Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, he and the rest of his species should be left to roam in their home habitat.
“This is a protected species,” Petley says.
“So that’s why I have a bit of an issue of taking these animals from the wild because they are protected. This one is not really endangered right now but they are at risk, and one of the main reasons they are at risk is because they are so easy to catch.
“And they’re quite friendly tame turtles so people tend to pick them up and then they take them . . . .
“They should be left where they are.”
Finding Norbert