Banging Time

Scratch, scratch. Slumph! Scratch, scratch. Slumphhhh! What time is it? I look at the clock and through blurry eyes read 6:00 AM. Light is barely peaking through my window. The noise continues, becoming more desperate with each passing minute. It's Fritzi, banging around in his box. He wants to get out, and I want to get back to sleep. If straightjackets existed for turtles, I'd put him in one. Instead, I get up, walk over to his box, and tap on his shell to scare him. He pulls everything in, and I cover up the box. Peace at last!

And thus the beginning of "Banging Time" arrives. It's April and this turtle's fancy has turned to, well ah, things of a reproductive nature. Every year, like clockwork around April, he starts becoming restless. All winter, he calmly sat in his very large box, hardly ever doing more than a couple of laps around it on any day. Now, he acts as if it were a jail and escaping the only thing on his pea sized brain.

I've had Fritzi as a pet for over 40 years. It wasn't until about 11 or 12 years ago that he started to get the turtle version of Spring Fever. Maybe it was due to the fact that all his early boxes were small and cramped and he was constantly crawling around wanting to get out. Therefore, there was no way to tell the difference between normal bang around the box behavior and this mating urge. Now he had, what I christened it the "Turtle Condo," a very much larger box. So anytime he acted like he wanted to crawl the walls I knew something was wrong.

The first year I noticed this behavior, I thought he was sick. He would not only pace around the box, but would try to climb the walls. Sometimes I would find him totally vertical, plastered against the box's side. Then it would be a slow slip to the side and he'd be on all fours again. Sometimes, I'd hear a "thump" and find him on his back thrashing around trying to right himself. But it would not deter him. This urge to get out would continue hour after hour, day after day. I was totally clueless as to what he wanted other than to escape.

He'd refuse food. All the more I thought he was sick. With winter over, he would have started eating regularly again. Now not even his favorite items enticed him. He did drink water, but would go absolutely bonkers in his water tub. 10 quick swallows and he'd be banging around, hitting the plastic walls. I thought maybe he had some type of stomach problem.

The revelation to this mysterious behavior came quite unplanned. I decided to put him out on the living room floor and let him walk around a bit. Maybe that would help him. So I sat down and watched him wander around. He was like a crazy wound up toy. He walked faster than I ever had seen him walk before. And then he spotted it. My big ceramic turtle. He made a beeline over to it and scoped it out. He examined it from every angle. He sniffed at it. And then he .... mounted it! I doubled up with laughter. Fritzi wanted a girl turtle and he thought this ceramic likeness of a turtle was one. I was amazed.

It was a relief to know Fritzi wasn't ill. But what could I do to help the little guy in his misery? I continued to give him sessions with the ceramic turtle, that I christened DoDo. Then, one day on a lark, I placed a large flat, round stone in his box. He looked at it, poked at it, walked around it, then .... humped it. So now I added "Rock"ette to his collection of fake girl turtles.

What amazed me then, and continues to amaze me is that he thinks of these inanimate objects as substitutes for the real thing. (I've offered him other round objects through the years and many elicited the same behavior!). They have nothing in common with a real turtle, they don't in any way resemble a turtle (DoDo is huge, 5 times Fritzi's size). But then I should criticize? I refer you to the human proclivity of using an object called a "Dildo". Hardly any more the real thing than Fritzi's sex objects!

Thus every year I cope with banging time. I keep him in the dark all day by covering his condo. I put him in the bathroom at night so I can sleep peacefully (I've gone in during the night, turned on the nightlight, lifted up the towel across his plastic box and found him staring back wide awake. Those soulful eyes just begging me for DoDo) And I give him romps with Rock and DoDo. Eventually he becomes calmer. I put him in the living room, in a smaller box and let him see the sun come in through the windows. Then suddenly, one day, I find him napping in the middle of the day and know that he's back to normal. But should I take him out and place him next to DoDo ... The wild man in him returns. Go figure .... I chalk it up to the mysterious sex life of a turtle!

© Leona Seufert


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