Our Herman having a walk around the house this eve..
She keeps leaving her heated house in the garden for a walk about but soon turns around when faced with the cold. It's only 4-5oC out there, those are hibernating temps! Poor thing is going a bit stir-crazy.
I just don't understand why anyone would want a tortoise in the UK and personally I think it should be banned. We simply do not have the weather to make their lives comfortable, even our summers are rarely as hot as they need.
People just didn't think/care/know in the 60's and 70's, when she was brought over to the UK as a baby, plucked from the wild. Thankfully that no longer happens as the practice was banned.
I’m about to confess a worse thing - we had a tortoise when we were little - I must have been 3 & my sister 5. She was was terrified of it and it was forever escaping. Didn’t take very long for my parents to not go in search 😳. I’m hoping somebody adopted it and it’s still alive and kicking.
@judithg Ha, that's so bad of your parents!! I take the tort to the field down the road to eat all the weeds sometimes and I've had a lot of people stop to tell me their tales of losing torts and discovering torts. Seems most people underestimated their good digging and climbing skills... so hopefully your pet was discovered and is living it up! :-)
@blightygal I hope so - I don’t recall any neighbours owning up to a tortoise though....but no urban foxes about so hopefully she ended up somewhere nice. We also bought a house that came with a pair of tortoises until the spring (they reduced the price on condition we looked after them till they properly woke up - we’d no idea where they were hibernating anyway). They were called Honour and Offer for reasons that became extremely obvious!
(grins)