No Hares Need Apply
How do you start an urban wildlife sanctuary from scratch and run it on a shoestring budget?
You take a cue from your animals and just keep plodding ahead. That’s how Susan Tellem and Marshall Thompson have slowly turned their Malibu-based American Tortoise Rescue into an international force for the protection of turtles and tortoises.
Over the last 10 years, the couple’s do-it-yourself intervention has saved more than 1,000 injured or abandoned animals.
These days their sanctuary on a hilltop above Zuma Beach houses 100 crusty castoffs--those mauled by dogs, crushed by cars or given up on by their owners.
The sick and injured ones are patched up and nursed back to health. Slowly, of course.
The real goal of the rescue service is to find permanent homes for the animals once they are healthy. That isn’t easy, since some turtles can live as long as 100 years.
So Tellem and Thompson, who live on the upper levels, have learned to tread lightly through their home’s bottom-floor turtle hospital. That’s where plastic containers warmed by heat lamps and electric pads are occupied by turtles being treated for everything from parasites and shell rot to kidney failure.
They watch their step in their backyard too. Animals come running, turtle-style, through the series of double-fenced pens that are planted with grasses and shrubs to offer natural hiding places for the ground-hugging guests.
The husband-and-wife team spends two hours a day feeding live worms and shredded vegetables to the animals. They spend hours more answering phone calls and e-mail messages about abused turtles and problem tortoises.
It’s time well spent, they say. When you break through their tough exterior shells--symbolically speaking, of course--you find that turtles and tortoises are smart and loyal little friends.
“Nobody believes it. But you can have a relationship with these animals,” said Thompson, a 51-year-old who also works full time as a video producer on shows that include reality television and extreme sports. “They look you in the eye and chase you around the yard. They are stunningly intelligent.”
Added Tellem, a health care public relations specialist: “Turtles have been around for 200 million years. But in the last 20 years man has almost made them extinct.”
The whims of the pet trade and an increase in live food markets are to blame, she said.
Some cute, saucer-size turtles sold in pet stores are actually sulcatas, also known as African spurred tortoises. Pet buyers often are unaware that sulcatas quickly outgrow the glass aquariums that are sold with them. In fact, adult sulcatas can weigh as much as 200 pounds.
“They are incredibly strong,” Thompson said. “They can push through an apartment wall. They can move a piano if they have traction.”
Thompson said he learned that the hard way when a sulcata crashed through a sliding glass door at their house.
Many turtle rescue calls involve large tortoises--plant-eating animals distinguished by their tall shells. Turtles have flatter shells and are carnivorous.
This spring a 92-year-old Venice woman moving into a nursing home was forced to give up a beloved desert tortoise that her family had kept as a pet since 1934.
“It broke her heart to give it away,” Tellem said. “But we adopted it out to a young couple from Tujunga that has a female tortoise.”
Marlies Reno said she was delighted to take in the male tortoise, estimated to be 80 years old. For years, she said, she has relied on American Tortoise Rescue for tips on her 20-year-old female tortoise’s feeding and hibernation needs.
“Tortoises have neat personalities. They’re like little dinosaurs,” she said. “They come running when you call; it just takes a while for them to get to you.”
Most of the Tellem-Thompson rescues involve smaller box turtles or water turtles, such as Cricket, an animal flown to the sanctuary last week from Western Samoa.There are no turtles in the wild there, so authorities reacted with alarm when a North American turtle was found floating in a river. Turtle fan Winnie Lineberger, a visiting Catholic church worker from the United States, volunteered to fly the wayward turtle back to this country to keep it from being killed by nervous officials.
Lineberger’s affection for turtles stems from the fact that she is a Native American--a member of the Turtle Clan of the Mohawk nation.
Most turtle rescues occur much closer to home.
Los Angeles animal control officers have worked with the sanctuary dozens of times. The state’s Department of Fish and Game once sent 300 baby turtles for Thompson and Tellem to care for.
Local veterinarians often send people who find injured or lost turtles to the Malibu sanctuary. Small turtles kept in backyards can cleverly escape by digging under fences or finding gates left open.
On their own in the city, turtles don’t stand much of a chance against cars and dogs.
“Dogs and turtles don’t mix. Dogs think they’re chew toys,” said Tellem. “I’ve seen chewed-up shells and legs bitten off.”
Turtles kept indoors don’t always fare well, either.
“This one has terrible shell rot. It comes from sitting in a bowl of water and never getting out. Bacterial infection sets in,” said Tellem, pointing to a box turtle warming itself beneath a heating lamp. “She’s going to make it, though.”
A registered nonprofit agency for the last seven years, American Tortoise Rescue lists about 2,500 supporters. Donations and $15 annual memberships bring in about $5,000 a year. But expenses last year came to $15,000--requiring that Thompson and Tellem foot most of the bill.
The sanctuary’s phone, (800) 938-3553, records about two dozen calls a day. Its Web site (www.tortoise.com) receives hundreds of e-mailed inquiries a week.
The couple trace their interest in turtles to 1990, when they were living in Beverly Hills. Tellem gave her husband two Russian tortoises, Peggy and Sue, for his birthday. Thompson was hooked.
As they learned more about turtles, they became concerned with what they heard about tactics used to capture and contain the animals. Soon, they were taking in abandoned and abused turtles--sometimes buying sick ones from pet stores to save them.
Three years ago the turtle refuge outgrew its Beverly Hills space and they moved to the 1 1/2-acre Malibu site.
These days the turtle rescue service is working with other advocacy groups to abolish “live market” slaughter of turtles for food.
Tellem and Thompson, meantime, are training others to eventually take over the refuge and its growing population of long-living inhabitants.
When the two of them are gone, they don’t want to leave their survivors shell-shocked.
