I am a member of the botanical garden down the street and have been for several years. It’s one of my Happy Places, even though I know next to nothing about gardening. Being a card-carrying member allows me the excuse to drop in for any or no reason all through the year and not just when the in-laws are in town during the summer. As a result, I’ve come to know the garden quite well. My frequent visits have never dulled my wonder at the outstanding beauty of the place. Still, I would suggest that being an attentive member has bestowed on me a misplaced sense of ownership.
On a recent visit, for instance, I was suddenly struck by the absence of the turtles that usually sun themselves on various flat rocks around the pond. The rocks were bare, and although I had to admit that the sun was at best weak on that particular day, I started feeling anxious about the lil’ fellas. Where do turtles hang out during the colder months of the year? Do the gardeners round them all up and send them to a sunny Mexican seaside turtle resort until spring? Why is this just now occurring to me when presumably it happens every year? And, other than me, who’s in charge around here?
After asking a few questions and doing a bit of research, I found out that the turtles who call this Vancouver botanical garden home, are Red-Eared Sliders and are in no way native to BC. As such, in this province they have become a menace to the native turtle species (the Painted Turtle) as well as to various fish, insects, and frogs.
The Red-Eared Slider, for whatever reason, is the most popular turtle that is bred to sell. People buy these guys and sometimes get bored with ownership or freaked out at the thought that their turtle might be carrying Salmonella, so they let it go free in the local park or forest. Not good. Turtles raised in captivity do not automatically do well in the wild on their own, often becoming sick and transmitting disease around whatever pond they frequent. In the same way that one person with a cold infects the entire extended family at Thanksgiving.
Don’t buy turtles as pets. Just don’t. (And stay home if you’re feeling sick!)
The Red-Eared Slider is as incorrectly named as is the Painted Turtle (spoiler alert: Not painted. Born that way.). To state the obvious, turtles of any flavour don’t actually have external ears. They’ve got middle and inner ears that serve to detect vibrations, however, as any 2nd grader could point out, there are no ears on the outsides of their heads. This said, it seems odd that the Red-Eared Slider carries the moniker that it does. Poor dear. To have to live a lie from the first handshake of introduction sets a turtle up for endless ridicule, I’d imagine.
It does carry a red stripe on its head in the general location of where one might stick an ear, but that is as close as it gets. That red stripe can even become a farce as the turtle ages, turning the red stripe of youth into more of a yellow splotch. Age embarrasses even cold-blooded reptiles. There’s some small comfort in that.
Its claim to fame is that a Red-Eared Slider was the turtle that the Teenage Mutant Ninjas’ image was based around. (Turtles who do Ninjutsu. Wow. We really will buy anything.)
The ‘slider’ part of its name seems a bit more suited as this turtle is well known to slide off surfaces it perches on in order to disappear into the water to escape from predators as well as any undue scrutiny about where its ears aren’t. Surely all turtles are good at the slide, but these guys snagged the tag before anyone else thought to claim it, and it stuck.
The female Red-Eared Sliders are bigger than the males, but both grow to be larger than our native turtles, which contributes to why the home team has been bullied out of their natural habitat. Red-Eareds generally grow to between about 6” to 10” long, depending on their sex and age. Speaking of age, this turtle is able to live for 30 – 40 years.
Again, don’t buy a turtle as a pet–you will be stuck cleaning out aquariums until you are very old!
The Red-Eared Sliders at the botanical garden, slip into their brumation state (a reptilian version of hibernation) once October comes knocking. Their resting state consists of a very deep sleep while still leaving the turtle’s defensive instincts active. They don’t eat during brumation, and their breathing slows down dramatically thus requiring them to only take breathes periodically. They do all this underwater. Did I already say that? UNDERWATER ALL WINTER.
If by miracle they are not dead by spring, they’ll usually start coming out of their brumation in March, on those perfect spring days when the sun is weakly shining on the rocks rimming their ponds. How they know this happening up there, is beyond me. If the weather takes a turn for the worse, as is the way of Spring, and temperatures plummet, a turtle just heads back to bed at the bottom of the pond and retreats into his brumating state until things warm back up.
So, I’ve come to realize that my concern for the health and welfare of the turtles at the botanical garden is completely unfounded because, as has been demonstrated time and time again, most things in nature do not require our pithy human interventions in order to survive. They thrive in spite of our attentions and our lame attempts at making their habitat more ‘comfortable’ for them. Nature has already made turtles in such a way that allows them to interpret the seasons and their surroundings to their advantage while making the most out of the bodies they have been assigned.
What was I so worried about?
