Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Our sulcata has been here since July 2002, for the first 2 years & 8 months she's been here we had a fence that everyone could see through.
Then we built one that nobody can see through, we did it for 2 reasons, one was for her so that she wouldn't pace the fence line all day long.. the other reason is because the old fence was very old & falling apart, it needed replacing anyway.

Now all of a sudden we're having a problem with crowds of kids coming here to gawk at the tortoise.
In summers past if we were outside anyway & a kid or 2 came by & asked to see her we'd let them in.
Last week a couple of kids who've seen her many times before started barging in so I started locking the gate, they climbed over the fence & barged in anyway.
We put up no trespassing signs then on Saturday the dog who was inside the house started barking a lot, I looked outside & saw 6-7 kids hanging all over the gate as our tortoise grazed in the front yard. Then I saw one kid climb up on the fence & start to jump in so I had to go out & run them all off. Geeze!
One of the kids in the Sat. crowd is one who's been barging in, he lives on the same street I do but I have no idea who the others were or where they came from.
Great just great this is all I need... they come in here, hurt the tortoise, or worse get hurt themselves then I get sued.

Have any of you ever had to deal with something like this & if so what did you do about it?
-----
PHRatz

Yikes. Sounds like you have a bad situation on your hands.

In other posts, I have mentioned the large sulcata in my town that lives on a large lot and is fenced in by a chain link fence. Last year some kids jumped the fence and spray painted him.

If I read your post right, you now have a fence up that keeps people from seeing him, and NOW since the can't see him anymore they are jumping the fence to see him.

Maybe the solution is to give them what they want? By that I mean cut a notch (window) in the fence high enough so that it does not distract your tortoise, but does allow the kids to see in. If they get a clear view, there will be no need for them to jump on the fence or go into your yard maybe.

Good luck.

i agree maybe the kids just wanna see the turtle. cut small window so that they can see and your problem may be solved. however our tortoise run the yard freely and are in plain view and we never have any problems like that. if the passer by can not see the tortoise they may come to the door and ask for permission to see them. on the same note though we have had a huge problem with our pool. kids jump the fence all the time to swim when they know we are not home and talk about a liabilty on that. so i even caught one of the kids one time climbing the fence and asked him what he was doing and he said "i wanna swim" and i then escorted him to his parents house and then they got mad at me for disciplining their kid! so i think it has a lot to do with the parents. talk to the parents and see how they react and tell them if it does stop the kids will get a free ride in the police car. that always seems to scare the crap out of them and besides it sounds like you already have a good relationship with your police dept. hope you can get a happy resolution to this problem........ oh did i forget to mention razor wire on top of the fence? j/k

thanks jason

It sounds like a good idea. If we'd put up a wooden fence cutting a whole in it might be an option, but we spent way too much money on a cinder block fence to cut a whole in it just to accommodate trespassers. Actually though because of city code the fence is sloped in the front it isn't that tall. An adult can easily see her by just standing there IF she's in the front yard.

My DH actually said "what do I have to do put up razor wire? he was j/k too LOL.

Since I've told people this I've heard a lot of stories from people who have swimming pools, wow I can't get over how rude people are these days. When I was a kid you just did not help yourself to someone else's pool without their permission, it just wasn't done. Now I'm hearing from pool owners that adults these days are so rude that they barge in themselves so of course the kids aren't going to know any better if the parents have that much nerve.
I read a letter to Dear Abby once about people who built a new swimming pool & began having problems with all these strangers dropping in to swim so they posted rules on the fence & said it worked.
I wonder if tortoise rules posted on the fence would work too?
You must ask permission to see her
You can't see her without one of us being there.
You cannot climb on the fence
I dunno think it's worth a try?
-----
PHRatz

well you can try the sign but however i believe in one of your previous post you said you already had signs up so i dunno if that will work or not.

>>well you can try the sign but however i believe in one of your previous post you said you already had signs up so i dunno if that will work or not.

Good point! I did say I have signs up & they didn't work so you're right... what good would posted rules do?

One bright spot in all this so far this week.. I assumed these kids would be back but today is Thursday, I nicely ran those kids off on Saturday & none have been back since.
I didn't go outside yelling at them I said please don't climb on the fence. Then I simply asked them what they were doing.
One answered they were looking at the "turtle" I said ok you've seen her, bye bye now.
They looked at me like I was crazy & I said I'm serious bye bye now so they all left.

I wonder if later that day when they were at home telling mom & dad what had happened.. maybe mom & dad told them to stop bothering people when they aren't invited. Some parents do still teach their kids how to behave & it's possible that some of these parents had a little talk with their kids.
I can believe that before I told them to leave the parents may not have known that the kids were coming over here as often as they were. If once the parents found out they were coming here too much they may have been told to knock it off.
Maybe things are going to simmer down now. If they want to go back to asking if they can see her when we're outside ourselves, I wouldn't mind that but this jumping the fence & coming to the door nearly every day stuff had/has to stop.
-----
PHRatz

Maybe some nice desert-scaping may be in order.

Most kids tend to stay away from cacti with very long thorns....well most smart kids anyways.

>>Maybe some nice desert-scaping may be in order.
>>

Now that's not a bad idea! We haven't had this fence for long, we haven't planted anything outside it yet, we haven't done anything but keep the weeds mowed down. Something thorny like that just might do the trick.
Yeah now we're cooking, thanks for that idea.
-----
PHRatz

Along that same line of thought......

Is the top of your fence finished? Meaning, are the holes in the cinderblocks filled in?

I have seen people plant cactus in the holes in the top of their cinderblock fence. It looks nice and acts like razor-wire around the top.

If not, I goess you could plant the cactus (I would use the large-pad prickly pear style (nopales) and line the perimeter of your fence. It might take a couple years for it to grow up to the height you need to do the job, but hey, it will look nice and hopefully do the job.

Yes there is a concrete cap on top of the fence so planting in the fence itself would be out but.. it's berry harvesting time.

All we have to do is drive down any local highway & we can get all the opuntia seeds we could ever wish for.
I also have a baby round cactus of some sort that I found growing on our property, I dug it up & put it in a flower part until I could decide what to do with it. Hey I could use that too.
Prickly pear grows naturally around here, spineless opuntia doesn't but we have the spineless growing in the yard for the tortoise. We bought that & I've found that it grows very quickly it has actually quadrupled in size this year, so hopefully the prickly pear would do that too.
I really like this idea because it'd look nice out there while it's deterring nosy people.
I'm glad somebody thought of it!
-----
PHRatz

Not sure, I do believe the prickly pear (with spines) only grows to about 4 feet tall.

I have seen the spineless variety (nopalas) grow to 8 or 9 feet tall.

A mix between the two would look nice.

Smiles...Rich

>>Not sure, I do believe the prickly pear (with spines) only grows to about 4 feet tall.
>>
>>I have seen the spineless variety (nopalas) grow to 8 or 9 feet tall.
>>
>>A mix between the two would look nice.

Rich I'm not really sure how tall prickly pear grows, I've never paid much attention to it until I got a sulcata. 4 feet though would be perfect!!
We have the spineless planted in the backyard but it's ALL for the tortiose so I'd hate it if anyone damaged any that was growing outside the fence. It's not cheap stuff to buy so I'm pretty protective of my spineless cactus lol.
I'd rather have the prickly pear outside & because the fence isn't very tall in front, 4 feet would be perfect because we also have a nutty neighbor who lives across the street & one house over from our house.
Nutty neighbor apparently spends her days reading the city code & must have the whole thing memorized by now. Then she calls in complaints on everybody for stupid things like they didn't mow the lawn soon enough to please her. They didn't get a broken appliance to the dump soon enough to please her. One little infraction & she's reporting you, then a code enforcement officer either sends you a letter or shows up at your door.
When you mow before you get the letter you wonder what the heck is this for?
Well that's what we thought before we found out who it is that reports everybody for any little thing. Now we just ignore the letters.
If we had cactus TOO TALL in front oh my.. she'd be whining about it forever. That is why 4 foot tall cactus would be perfect, to keep her quiet.
Keep her quiet & keep kids off the fence, 2 cactus birds with one stone. I like that.
-----
PHRatz

We've decided we're just going to go berry picking ASAP. I think if we'd take some of the berries, cut them up, spread those seeds around we could grow pleny of prickly pear out in front of the fence without even having to go buy it.
That's perfect, free cactus, prickly to prevent fence climbing.. great solution to not just the people problem but it'll look nice out there.
Thanks so much for the idea!
Ya'll are the best.
-----
PHRatz

You do know that you can just plant cactus pads directly into the earth and they will root and grow don't you?

You can just stick 'em in the ground every 12" or so, bury them about two or three inches in the dirt and eventualy they will root down and new pad buds will begin to form on them.

That has to be a lot faster than starting with seeds.

>>You do know that you can just plant cactus pads directly into the earth and they will root and grow don't you?
>>
>>You can just stick 'em in the ground every 12" or so, bury them about two or three inches in the dirt and eventualy they will root down and new pad buds will begin to form on them.
>>
>>That has to be a lot faster than starting with seeds.

Yes I did know that but the last time I tried dealing with prickly pear pads, my hands didn't enjoy that too much LOL!
Even with gloves on I spent an hour with the tweezers pulling out the spines that I needed a magnifying glass to see.
FUN with cactus.
I thought seeds might be easier..
-----
PHRatz

I had what I thought was a nice neighbor that wanted to come and help feed them. I told her what they could eat, and she followed the rules at the beginning. Then she kept feeding them things I told her they could not eat (bananas daily, dog food, etc). I kept asking her not to feed them fruit, and she claimed the dog food was a mistake (she meant to feed mazuri). Long story short...I found dog food in there again so I confronted her. I was so mad I have never been so mean and rude and angry at someone. I yelled and cussed and told her if I saw her near my yard again I was going to call the police and have her arrested for trespassing. She was scared to death and I have never seen her again. That doesn't always work with kids, but if the kindness doesn't work I guess maybe try being mean? Darn kids these days!lol. But I do like the cactus idea. Good luck!

>>I was so mad I have never been so mean and rude and angry at someone. I yelled and cussed and told her if I saw her near my yard again I was going to call the police and have her arrested for trespassing. She was scared to death and I have never seen her again. That doesn't always work with kids, but if the kindness doesn't work I guess maybe try being mean? Darn kids these days!lol. But I do like the cactus idea. Good luck!

Oh I don't blame you! I hate to have to get ugly with someone but when they are actually harming my pet then I'd be coming unglued over that too. Dog food NO WAY! Lots of fruit is bad enough but DOG FOOD EEEK!
Sounds like you tried but if people won't listen & you have got to stop what they're doing.. well that'd make anyone angry. You can only put up with so much.
I have next door neighbors who do things that make me cringe but they adore Destiny, they've never tried to feed her, they enjoy just watching her. After reading what you said about yours I feel lucky to have people who only make me cringe sometimes.
(It's the snakes, they want to kill ALL the snakes & that is what makes me cringe, I want them to leave the snakes alone!)
-----
PHRatz