Turtle Lovers Are Emerging From Their Shells : For Valley Club, the Best Pet Comes in a Hard Cover

They don’t talk back, and they don’t bite the mailman. . . .

--Eric Akaba

Consider the tortoise.

Take your time. It’s not going anywhere. Not so’s you’d notice. Unless you happen to be a turtle freak, like Will Watson.

Watson’s T-shirt says it all. On the front is a picture of a California--or Desert--tortoise and the legend “I May Be Slow.” The back reads “But I Get There” in lettering above what can only be described as a turtle’s patoot.

Watson has gotten to Canoga Park a little early--a rarity among the turtle people--and he is waiting in his pickup truck for the meeting to start. Waiting patiently, of course.

The 200-member Valley Chapter of the California Turtle and Tortoise Club meets monthly to swap lore, watch films or slides, put out a little preservation propaganda, pass the hat for the sick and wounded, consider requests for adoption and plan the annual T & T Show.

Talking Turtle

Before the doors open, Watson, 30, of Lancaster, is happy to talk turtle.

“You’ve got to know them,” he says. “When you do, you’ll find they’re fascinating. They really are. I can watch them for hours.

“I grew up around tortoises--we always had them in the yard--and I’ve raised them from eggs. Each one is different. They have their own moods, just like people.

“One is aggressive, another shy. Some are active, some passive. One wants to fight, the other wants to run away. One undersized male I have just lies in ambush in the shade, then attacks like a little tank and rams another male.

“In the winter, though, they all bury the hatchet and hibernate together.”

Two days later, on the lawn outside the Van Nuys-Sherman Oaks Recreation Center, Claudia Jacobs is walking General Patton and Shelley. Or vice versa. Patton is chasing Shelley with single-minded purpose and Jacobs, in the interest of decorum, is chasing both.

“Slow?” says a passer-by, intrigued in spite of himself. “Hey, they move a lot faster than my ex-wife.”

Jacobs, a North Hollywood chiropractor, is taking a breather from the Turtle and Tortoise Show inside, an exhibit-cum-bazaar that is to attract some 500 visitors before day’s end. “They come out of curiosity,” Jacobs says, “and they become enchanted. I know I did.

“These are box turtles. The male was given to me about five years ago. He was nice enough--friendly, kind of like a little dog--but he seemed, I don’t know, lonely . So about a year ago I bought Shelley.

“You know how they say turtles have no expressions? Well, I put her on the kitchen counter with him and I tell you, his eyes lit up. He was so excited! You could see this red glow on his face.

“Now he follows her everywhere. She gets exasperated sometimes and kind of flips him over on his back. That cools him off some.

“But sure, they’re different. He loves avocados and she won’t touch them. She loves mangoes and he won’t eat them. She eats sow bugs, he favors snails.

“He’s more aggressive. Sometimes embarrassingly so. . . .”

Inside the rec center, Elaine Sludikoff has an entirely different outlook on the virtues of the reptile. Turtle people are like that.

“I have a Desert tortoise at home,” says Sludikoff of Los Angeles. “Blossom is my pet. I enjoy her immensely.

“She’s quiet, she’s sweet, she enjoys her flower petals and her fruit, and for my part, she gives me a lot of peace and serenity. Just watching a tortoise walk, munching her way around the yard, I find I relax.”

Sludikoff’s day at the show is less than serene, but she’s brought it on herself.

Appearing as “The Unknown Turtle,” she is decked out head to tail in a many-splendored felt-and-foam costume of her own design. The back shell--or carapace--is dark green; the front shell--the plastron--is yellow and orange.

Everyone wants a picture taken with Unknown. “It adds a lightness, a joy to the show,” she says, and it costs $2, proceeds toward preservation of turtles and tortoises, many of them facing extinction.

“The California Desert tortoise is becoming endangered,” Marc Graff was saying at the Valley chapter meeting. “With increasing development, there’s a gradual loss of habitat. There are the occasional people who take tortoises for food, other people who think they’d be nice to have and want to short-circuit the pet trade, even though they know nothing about care and feeding.

“Then there are those motorcycles races that destroy the ecology, and even people who shoot tortoises for target practice.”

Graff, a Canoga Park psychiatrist and president of the chapter, points out that the Desert tortoise is protected. A permit is required, and the proper procedure is to “adopt” a tortoise. Prerequisites are “a fenced yard cleared of poisonous plants; experience; means and willingness to pay the veterinary bill. We try to give them to good homes. Jan Gordon here is in charge of our adoptions.”

“You have to watch your dogs,” says Gordon, who harbors five tortoises, two collies and a nosy new dachshund at her Sylmar home.

“I turn a dog loose with the tortoises. Naturally, the dog will sniff, but if it barks, or even growls, at the tortoise, off it goes.”

Gordon is careful, too, just where in Southern California she places her wards. Malibu, for instance, is out, at least for the desert tortoise. Malibu is too wet; the tortoise will sniffle, sneeze and die. Turtles, though, are OK.

“Basically,” Gordon explains, “the turtle lives in water, the tortoise on land. Both lay their eggs on land.

“And yes, you can raise them from the egg. You bury the tortoise egg--it’s about the size of a Ping Pong ball--in a half-inch of sand and keep the temperature at 90 degrees for 90 days. The babies are about the size of a quarter.

“And then you care for them. They’re not freaks, you know; they’re living, breathing creatures, and in their own way, they’re beautiful.”

The tortoise and/or the turtle having been considered, if all too briefly, a few facts for the prospective adopter:

--Is it smart?

Look at it this way: How smart does it have to be?

With a brain about the size of a marble, it is smart enough to have hung around for 300 million years, which is a lot longer than the dinosaur, not to mention the mammal.

--Is it slow?

Everything is relative. A tortoise would take about five hours to walk a mile, if it had a mind to. Then again, what’s the hurry? The tortoise eats plants, and they’re not going anywhere.

Besides, nothing’s gaining on it. Just pull into the shell until things blow over.

--How can you tell the boys from the girls?

Easy. Turn turtle and examine the undershell, the plastron. The male’s plastron has a groovy little indentation, a concave scoop, for better purchase during the mating season. Females are flat, for egg space.

“Of course, it’s almost impossible to tell until they hit puberty, at about 13,” says Graff. “Not too different from today’s teen-agers.”

--Is it cute?

If you liked E.T., you’ll love turtles.

--Is it affectionate, or is this simply wishful thinking on the part of the turtle crowd. . . . ?

“They’re nice,” says Liana Robb, 10, at the turtle show. “They don’t make noise, like my sister Sarah does.”

“I have about 20 snakes and maybe 30 turtles and tortoises,” says Eric Akaba of Culver City, “and the turtles can definitely express themselves better.

“They don’t talk back, and they don’t bite the mailman.”

“He’ll come to you when you call him,” says Brian Doherty of Acton. “I found ours strolling across the driveway, and now he’s a pet for our daughter Colleen, who’s 3. He comes up to her and licks her toes. . . . “

“Just because they don’t drool all over you and wag their tails doesn’t mean they’re not affectionate,” says Marlyn Goldenberg of Sherman Oaks. “I’ve become very attuned to them, and I spoil both of them.

“They’ve never tasted turtle food. I buy very lean steak; I boil chicken legs for them; the only fruit they eat is fresh.

“Sometimes, when I’m on the couch listening to music, I’ll put Missy on my chest and she’ll crawl up and put her little paws on my face. She loves closeness.

“I talk to them as if they understand me. I say, ‘Have a nice day’ when I leave. I project love to them, and they project it back.

“Of course, Missy’s very dominant. They each have their own bowls, but sometimes Missy will hold her little friend under the water and eat her food. . . .”

“I don’t know about affection,” says Phoebe Wray of North Hollywood, “but they have a nice presence. Gentle.”

Wray, who brought her box turtle, Stubby, with her when she moved out from Massachusetts, dotes on her pet, who had lost a leg and part of his carapace when she found him, “but he’s no cripple. He’s feisty!”

“You get a nice feeling from turtles,” Wray adds. “It’s like stepping back 100 million years. It’s something atavistic you can respond to.”

The turtle show has bloomed into something mighty like a fair.

One entire wall has been taken up by the exhibits of Peggy Nichols, a funny and formidable woman from Long Beach.

Nichols has hundreds of turtles back home and several dozen on display here.

They are housed in an inverted sandbox, a planter, even a cutaway doll’s house, where the little ones, no dummies, have congregated in the kitchen, eating hibiscus petals.

“They prefer red,” says Nichols, “but I have only pink today.”

Adam Maron of Van Nuys displays an amazing variety for a 14-year-old aficionado: an Asian sideneck, a Mississippi map, a red-eared slider, a Japanese terrapin. . . .

“People say, ‘Hey, they’re probably boring,’ but they’re not,” Maron insists. “I mean, just the way they eat is fascinating. Sure, dogs and cats eat too, but turtles catch your eye.

“Did you ever see a turtle pounce? Well, pounce slowly, anyway. The fish don’t last long in my tanks, or the pond out back. Maybe it’ll take the turtle a month or two, but sooner or later. . . .

“Each turtle is different. The snappers are aggressive, of course. The musk, when it’s disturbed, gives you a little stink, like a skunk.

“I have a lot of animals, but turtles are my favorites.”

In the back of the show, Fred Caporaso, a Chapman College professor, shows off a matamata, a beast that is surpassingly ugly until you know where he’s coming from--namely the murky waters of the Amazon Basin.

The matamata looks like a log, water-soaked and chewed to ribbons by an indiscriminate beaver.

“The water’s so cloudy he can’t see very well,” says Caporaso, “so he senses food through those nerve endings on his neck flaps and chin. Then he sticks his neck out and sucks in the fish like a vacuum cleaner.

“You’ll note, however, that he has a great smile.”

At the Turtle and Tortoise Show, there are enough smiles to last another 300 million years.

The turtle people look like anyone else, but they do seem to reflect some of the serenity and purpose of their wards, not to mention an unfeigned affection.

Kathy Angelheart of Burbank explains that when her turtle was determined to be “unable to have babies, we adopted.” Whether for the turtle’s benefit or Angelheart’s remains unclear.

Nancy Brown of Reseda tells of a recent operation on 40-year-old Claudia to remove a large bladder stone: four hours of surgery; two surgeons, two assistants and an anesthesiologist.

The cost was astronomical, at least for a mere turtle. “Nothing ‘mere’ about Claudia,” says Brown. “After all, I’ve had her for 23 years.”

“Out of nine eggs I had, four hatched,” Jan Gordon, the club adoptions lady, was saying. “In the wild, maybe 10% survive, so in one way, tortoises are better off with humans.”

“But if they all hatched,” someone says, “wouldn’t turtles take over the world?”

“Maybe,” says Gordon, “but the world would be a better place for it.”