Ancient companions

Turtles have fascinated me since my childhood. When I was about 10, I found a tiny turtle that tried to cross the street while I was riding my bycicle. I stopped and couldn't believe what I saw. It was a Greek baby turtle. Of course I took it home with me and despite the expecting trouble with my parents due to another pet, I was absolutely happy. My first tortoise was called Herby. At that time it was hard to find out about a turtle's needs and due to some given weakness Herby died after 2 years. I never forgot it and said to myself that I'm going to have turtles again when I'm grown up. So that's what I did. In 2000 I bought another turtle in a zoo shop. Her name was Adrasteia and she was really great. Unfortunately it's always a bit of a risk when you buy them in a shop and so she fell ill very soon and passed away cause medical care didn't help anymore.

Last year in summer, just about the time when we were moving into our new house, my aunt found a Greek tortoise while she was driving in her car. Her twin sons spotted it aside the street and so they took her to our house, cause we've still got an old stable on our estate and there is enough space for it. My daughter Loreia Runa gave it the name Rosa, allthough it's quite sure now, that our tortoise is a Sir.


Rosa is a great tortoise and I guess it might be between 15 or 25 years old. It isn't shy at all, she's wise and cheeky.
In summer 2008 my dear friend Katharina invited me to her home and she got a birthday present for me. 2 tiny baby tortoises!! They were only 4 months old and just too cute. We first held them in a terrarium, but in summer they joined Rosa in its outside enclosure. They got along very well with each other and my grandfather really build a wonderful tortoise home for them.


As you still can't say whether they're male or females we call them Douglas and Tony ;) or Seppi and Kathi or just Krötis. Last autumn it was the time for their first hibernation which is a quite riskful undertaking for so small tortoises, because a lot of them die after they wake up due to a weak circulation or loosing too much weight. So we decided to wake up our babies by the beginning of February cause they have been sleeping since the end of October. Small tortoises shouldn't sleep longer than 4 months. I've read a lot about tortoises and all the books say that it lasts for about one week until the tortoises get back to full "action" after their winter sleep. So I put them into a little box with a special granulate and took them into our house to a cold place cause they have to get used to the warmer temperatures slowly. Well after about 30 minutes you could hear them digging in the box because they wanted to get out of it. We were really surprised that it went that fast. So I bathed them for activating their circulation and after 2 days they already started to eat. I was really happy that they did so well and that they survived that dangerous first winter sleep.

So here are some pics of the feeding of our beasts of prey :)