Reptile & Amphibian Forums

We don't lock the gate when we're home, we're going to have to start locking it now.
There's a 4th grade kid who keeps coming over here to look at the tortoise. Yesterday he shows up with a friend banging on my front door. I look & they've got 2 box turtles with them & I thought did they find these? Then I realized those turtles are MINE.
One kid was holding Hobo & Charity, scared the heck out of my turtles & said "these 2 were getting away."
No they weren't, they were at the gate looking out. I knew what my turtles were doing.
Then they asked if Hobo was a snapping turtle because he tried to bite. Well yeah you scared him to death of course he tried to bite. As soon as I took Hobo & set him down he :OOF:: vanished. He ran off & hid, poor Hobo.
Then the one kid wanted the other one to help him pick my 50 lb tortoise up off the ground. Why I don't know, but they had to leave when they started touching her. One tried to touch her head, I said "do not put your hand anywhere around where her shell closes up, if you get your hand stuck when she closes she could break your hand."
He says "How do you know? Have you gotten your hand stuck in there before?" No I'm not stupid enough to do that lol
Ok kids bye bye now.
Yeesh that gate is staying locked 24/7 from now on.

Do any of you find kids or anyone else wanting to invade your turtle land?
My mistake for not locking up. :-x
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PHRatz

I don't tell any kids what I have & neither do my kids tell their friends. They know it is a NO-NO with me. The only people who know are my 2 next door neighbors. Just in case one escapes, they'll know to return them to me. You have to keep your gate locked or you may be missing a friend eventually. Word of mouth spreads because kids are kids. Keep an extra eye on them for now. Good luck!

Oh & BTW Turtle, I don't tell people what I have inside the house.
What they can't see they don't need to know about!

People on this street know about the bird because they can hear her & they all saw her too. She appeared in the neighborhood a year ago this month, we're the ones who spent 3 weeks trying to catch her then finally we did. Nobody claimed her so we have a loud lovebird screeching inside the house today. They can't see my little turtles so I don't show them to anyone.

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PHRatz

We keep ours locked, although if someones kid wanted to get in, they easily could.
The deal here is that neighborhood kids can come by ant time and look at the turtles from outside the fence, but absolutely posotively NOONE is allowed in the enclosure without my or my husbands supervision.
This has been working out fine so far (knock on wood) because mostly its the very little ones who want to see the tutles, and they are out walking with a grownup anyway. I live 'in town' so kids don't really ramble around unsupervised in the neighborhood.
The trade off is this: I welcome the visits most of the time if it prevents the kids from feeling a need to have one of their very own. I try to educate when I have the chance, you know?
So far, so good.
If I were you, I would consider finding out who the kids belong to, and contacting their parents to let them know that their kids had come and done that without permission.
Stephanie

Our problem is that everyone in the entire subdivision knows about "the big turtle" because for the first 2 years & 8 months that she was here we had chainlink fencing that everyone could see through.
We've been lucky so far, it seems as if all the neighbors pity her because of her sad story. Thankfully they do pity her because we have a neighborhood nut-case who harasses all the horse owners around here by constantly calling in complaints to Animal Control. She's trying to force the horses out even though it's legal in this zoning to keep them.
That's another story but I am happy that the nut-case told me to my face that she couldn't care less about people keeping turtles.
In the past when kids have asked to come in we'd let them but just coming in when they feel like it is a new thing.
The one who wanted to pick them up is a kid I don't recognize so maybe he's new to the neighborhood. Maybe we just need to make sure he gets with the program so to speak.
I have been keeping an even closer eye on them since this happened but honestly it just flew all over me when they did come in like that. I was as nice as I could be to them, I didn't speak in a cross manner to them, but I thought to myself we have to put a stop to this right now!
I never speak unkindly to the little boys because I know that they'll soon become teenagers. I don't want teenaged boys remembering that we were mean to them when they were little because I don't want them harming our shelled pets in later years. It was teenaged boys who used the tortoise for target practice before we adopted her.
Ok well, thanks for "listening" lol I just had to vent about this because it really upset me at the time but hopefully keeping the gate locked will help.
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PHRatz

So now I'm going to have to take Steph's suggestion and try to find out who these kids belong to. They don't live on the street we live on.
Yesterday I'm cooking in the kitchen when I hear a knock on the door, when the kids had found the gate locked they climbed over the fence.
They wanted to see "the big turtle" again so I had to turn everything off because no way was I going to leave them out in my yard unsupervised. I think they got the message when my DH got home 2-3 minutes later & had to move their bikes out of the way so he could get in the driveway and he asked them "Are you supposed to be in there?" He's got a way of intimidating people without really trying so I think they got it, hope so anyway..
Time to look for parents now. :::groan:::
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PHRatz