What Happens When Things Don’t Go To Plan

 

   Lockdown brought home to us how easily things can go wrong, people stuck on the wrong side of the country or even world, for weeks or months. Unexpected deaths and complications resulting from the Covid infection and other illnesses, leaving you helpless. Fortunately it did not trouble us in that way but it did make us wonder what if we had been affected.

 

   So we began creating a file all about the routine for looking after the tortoises, which is commonly known, to us ,as the ‘In Case I Die File’ but you Don’t have to actually die for others to need to know about what it contains.

 

   As a family everyone has their own important part to play, we all handle different aspects of our lives, to spread the load but that also means we don’t always know about what exactly it is that others do, which is where the ‘In Case I Die File Comes In’, we all chip in with details of how we take care of the tortoises.

 

   If you are the tortoises primary carer then others in the family and outside of it who may be called in to help in an emergency probably wont know all that needs to be done, or what should not be done. So, we recommend that you get yourself a notebook or something and make up a tortoise bible. You don’t need to include laminated diagrams, just start with the basics.

 

   If you are a zookeeper then a similar thing will already be in place at your collection and you will have other trained members of staff to take up the slack, if necessary. However, a private owner may not think about what would happen of you where not there to take care of your shell baby for whatever reason. You don’t have to die for this to be relevant.

 

   You will know your routine off by heart but someone having to step into the breach will already be feeling stressed about it and maybe very worried about you, depending up on the reason they have been asked to assist in the first place. You may have given your partner or children a brief run down on what looking after the tortoise involves but in stressful situations all thoughts can go out of the window. Give them clear step by step instructions of dos and don’ts, make things a little easier for them, and show them that you appreciate their help.

 

   Think about what would happen if you were in a similar situation. Your friend or relative has asked you to look after their Donkey/ Degu/ Monitor Lizard/ Parrot etc- maybe an animal you have no aversion to but would not choose as your own pet. You would probably have no clue where to start so, use these questions that you would want to ask, in that situation, only make them about your tortoise (you can apply it to your other animals too if you want.)

 

Include Things Like:

•  What heating and lighting to switch on or off in a morning and night.
• Which things not to switch off.
• How often the tortoise eats.
• What it can eat if you are giving it supplementary food.
• Where you store supplementary food - if it is dried like Readigrass or where are the best places in the garden to pick weeds for it to eat.
• What its favourite foods are. 
• When to give it supplements and how much. 
• What type of weather not to put it outside.
• Any pre-existing medical conditions .
• Any treatments it is having.
• Any treatments it has had in the past. 
• Contact details for a vet. 
• When to be worried and when they should take action. You don’t want them rushing it to the vets thinking it is dying because it was sprawled out in the sunshine, with limbs fully extended, and so relaxed and deeply asleep that it did not react to them coming close.  It's just being a happy tortoise and chilling out, there is no need for them to panic.
• Details about when you got the tortoise and how old it was.
• Where to find any official paperwork- things like A10’s (if applicable), microchip registrations, if there is any health insurance for it. etc 
• Where its favourite spots are when it goes into hiding, they wont want to spend hours searching if it can usually be found under a certain up turned plant pot. 
• Anything specific to care for that breed i.e. what humidity levels.
• Anything else that you feel would be helpful or necessary.

 

   You don’t have to do it all in one go, you can add to it over time, as you think up other things or your routines change. With luck you will never need anyone to even open the book, let alone follow the instructions but just in case you do its there ready and waiting.

 

   Just remember to put it in the tortoises house with the animal, don’t leave it in your bedside drawer because you want to have it to hand when you want to update it. Someone who does not know you would never think to look somewhere like that, and thus your hard work will be wasted.

 

 

The little guys are easy to pick up and move to safety but when they get a bit  bigger it's not so easy!

 

   Things do not always go the way you expect, in a day. Maybe you had to go somewhere and it was a nice day that morning so you put your tortoise out, expecting that you would be back in plenty of time to put it to bed.

 

   However, you get delayed with your meeting, or you get stuck in a massive tail back on the motorway and don’t move for hours or your car breaks down. Your phone goes flat or there is no reception and you cant get to a public phone.  And all the while, the weather freakishly takes a drastic and unexpected turn for the worse.

 

   Hopefully your partner or children have got the tortoise back to bed but what happens if its not being cooperative and they cannot pick it up. If they can’t get it onto wheels of some kind and it doesn’t want to go anywhere under its own steam, then they need to bring the housing or protection to the animal. They can’t just leave it sitting there with its temperature dropping, getting wet, in cold conditions whilst hoping that you will get home in the next ten minutes.

 

   It's not their fault they can’t shift it, but they wont want to let you down. When a 9st + Aldabra puts no effort into moving it is very frustrating and literally like trying to move a rock, maybe the rock is easier to move because you could at least roll it!!

 

   So you need to have equipment in place to keep the animal protected and comfortable until you can get back, and between you, get it safely inside its housing. You don’t want to run the risk of the tortoise, or a member of your family, being injured due to desperation and if it is raining heavily then you can’t have extension leads out in that weather, so it rules out the use of electric heaters.

 

   Maybe, when you get a new quilt for your bed, keep the old one and put it in the tortoise house, in a box, so that you can wrap the tortoise up in it if necessary. Put a couple of empty pop bottles with it, you can fill them from the hot water tap and use them as temporary hot water bottles, tucked beneath the quilt to keep the tortoises heat levels up. Maybe even get a small pop up tent, you can buy then cheap, second-hand, on the internet, as their name suggest they are easy to erect and small to store. Cut a hole in the bottom and then you can put it over the tortoise and protect it from the elements, if it gets damaged when the tortoise moves inside it, then it does not matter, it will have served its purpose. If the animal is moving it is obviously alive and well.

 

   You don’t need to spend a fortune on survival equipment or have shelves and shelves of stuff you just might need. You will probably never need it, but at least it is there and available, if there is a time it needs to be called into use.

 

 

 

   The problem with getting giant tortoises onto trolleys is that, unlike with moving a parcel, tortoises have legs that hang down. You will often need to add something like a tyre to lift them high enough off the ground, or else they can just walk right off it! Unfortunately this means you have to lift the 150kg+ tortoise even higher, so trolleys are not always the best option.

 

 

   All of this sounds very doom and gloom but its these types of simple things that could make all the difference to your animal, in an emergency, and give you peace of mind too. It does not have to be an outlandish scenario like above, it could just be something simple like there is a power cut that they can’t fix for 24 hours.

 

   Although it as always best, for your peace of mind and the animals ultimate safety and contentment, that they go back to their house every night. If the tortoise really does not want to move, and it is going to be a reasonable temperature overnight, then it is safe for them to camp out. Unless it is a very specialist breed, one night in the open will not harm them, they were designed to get wet. Obviously if it is going to be bad weather or chilly then that is another matter, and you may need to enact your emergency plan. Like with all other aspects of tortoise keeping, use your common sense for what is best for them. You don’t need to ‘molly coddle’ them, all the time, after all they are wild animals at heart and built and designed to live outside but that does not mean it is appropriate to put their lives and health in jeopardy, unnecessarily, just because you cannot be bothered to spend the time to coax them back to bed as you would miss the World Cup , Wimbledon, BGT or any other final!