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Turtlemania
(by Kara Krekeler - May 19, 2008)
For most people, May 24 is simply the start of Memorial Day weekend. But for University City resident Lynda Cole, it’s a day to celebrate and educate about turtles, those reptiles that wander around with their homes on their backs.
“People always say they love turtles, but then it turns out they don’t know a thing about them,” said Cole, director of the St. Louis/Midwest Turtle and Tortoise Society.
Cole’s organization will host its annual National Turtle Day celebration from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Humane Society of Missouri, 1201 Macklind Ave. The event will feature turtle-centric games, crafts and snacks, as well as an appearance by Charlie the tortoise, a male Sulcata tortoise that captured the attention of the local news media when he escaped from the Petropolis pet store in Chesterfield last September. He was found more than a week later and has since been outfitted with a GPS device, just in case he goes wandering off again.
The event will also feature a lecture by St. Louis Zoo zoological-medicine resident Pete Black, educational presentations about the international turtle pet trade and the rapidly declining population of turtle species native to the metro area.
“Of all the animals that need help, turtles need the most. They’re very vulnerable and the most abused,” Cole said, adding that in most anti-animal-abuse literature, turtles are nowhere to be found. “A turtle is one step up from a rock for most people. They’re not cute and cuddly.”
A part-time employee of the Zoo, Cole founded the turtle society in 1996 after she helped rescue an African leopard turtle during her volunteer work at the Wildlife Center in St. Louis County. After being turned down by a California turtle society that she hoped would be able to care for the leopard turtle — which requires a much warmer climate than the Midwest can provide — Cole started a search for a closer society to care for the animal.
“I started calling around to find out about a Missouri turtle society and found out there wasn’t one,” she said, adding that there was no such group anywhere in the Midwest as far as she could tell. That was enough to make her start a group on her own.
She has since devoted much of her time — and backyard — to rehabilitating turtles and attempting to dispel the many misconceptions about them, including the idea that their shells make them impervious to physical harm.
“The shell is living tissue. It can feel everything,” including the softest touch of a finger running along it, Cole said. She added that when she speaks to children’s groups, most of the kids don’t know that the shell is made of bone; usually they assume that it’s made of wood or rock.
But what really gets on Cole’s nerves is the common St. Louis practice of bringing turtles home from the country and putting them in an unfinished basement. For the most part, people who do that don’t feed the turtle, assuming that it will find enough bugs to survive.
“Turtles can take a lot of abuse for a long time, but they can starve over the years [kept in a basement],” she said, adding that basements also deprive turtles of sunlight, which Cole called “the most important nutrient” needed for a turtle’s survival. “They experience extreme bone loss if they don’t get sunlight. You just can’t keep a turtle in the house.”
Dispelling those myths is one of the main goals of the turtle society, which boasts members from across the country. But the bulk of the society’s active work rests on Cole’s shoulders. She does everything from setting up booths at events like the recent Earth Day celebration in Forest Park to rehabilitating turtles and releasing them into the wild. Right now, Cole uses her large backyard as a rehabilitation facility, although she said she hopes to one day open a turtle sanctuary in the country.
But in order to do that, she’ll need help and a lot more attention from the larger community, something she said isn’t so easy for a turtle society to find.
“Most people like the warm fuzzy animals,” she said. “It’s just a matter of finding turtle people.”
For more information about the St. Louis/Midwest Turtle and Tortoise Society or the National Turtle Day event, call 374-1389 or visit www.turtlehelpSTLTTS.org.
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