The video of the cat-ramming turtle suffered from such fatal overexposure that I never bothered to link to it here.

But a video with two tortoises and ramming, well, that's a different story. Not to mention the tortoise-lookalike rock.

Ask MetaFilter is one of my favorite web sites (I read it daily). In between various RelationshipFilter threads you can sometimes find gems like this:

Twin Cities Turtle-spotting spots
"My wife loves Turtles. Can anyone tell me where best to go, in the Twin Cities area, to see turtles in their natural habitat?

We're looking for (Twin Cities, Minnesota, USA) metro area parks, rivers, lakes, etc.; where we have a good chance of spotting wild turtles basking. While we're on the topic, any tips about the times of day or of year that are most favorable for spotting turtles will also be most welcome."

Several good answers follow.

A turtle can be a pet for a long time

"Puddles, a 10-year-old desert turtle at Delhi Pet Center in Cincinnati, likes to roam the store and greet customers."

Thank you, Delhi Pet Center, for being conscientious enough to show your customers just how large those cute little Sulcata tortoise hatchlings are going to grow to be in only one decade.

Maybe this is why I'm 35 and never married: all my commitment is tied up with my tortoises.

State outlaws ‘entombing’ of gopher tortoise
"Florida’s gopher tortoises will soon have one fewer threat from humanity.

For more than a decade, state law allowed developers to bury gopher tortoises during construction, even though the state listed the animal as a species of special concern.

Beginning Tuesday, developers will no longer be allowed to entomb gopher tortoises, which are in the process of being reclassified as a threatened species — the new rule will have no effect in Lee or Collier counties because they already don’t allow entombment.

“Not to defend entombment, but what was right about the program was that developers were required to pay a fee that let us buy gopher tortoise habitat someplace else,” said Joy Hill, a Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission spokeswoman. “However, because the process allowed entombment, nobody liked it, including developers.”

Nobody knows how many tortoises were entombed under the old system, Hill said."

You may be aware that the existence of this entombment procedure was one of the very reasons why I began this blog. August 1, 2007 was a good day for tortoise-kind.

Clearly I'm getting caught up on the turtle events that have occurred over the couple weeks I've been away. I'm trying to make my selections carefully. But really, is there a way I could fail to post some acknowledgment of the explosion in popularity of the "I like turtles" zombie boy?

This page wraps it up well enough.

"All that roadkill isn't just accidental -- an Ontario study has found almost three per cent of drivers, the majority of them men, swerve to intentionally steamroll snakes and turtles on the road."

Now this is one of those things that I just don't understand. You may think I'm just desperate for a new cause since I don't have the gopher tortoise entombment law to kick around anymore, but I'm serious here. These people creep me out. This goes beyond the basics for me: sure, it's true that animal abuse is a felony in many states. It's true that swerving to run over a reptile in the road is potentially dangerous to other drivers and to yourself. But what I'm talking about here is ... well, what creeps you out, buddy? Pedophile priests? That 35 year old guy who was trying to date your 16 year old daughter? Gays in the military? Reevers? Whatever that thing is that you think is just plain unnatural and doesn't have any right to exist, well, that's what I think of people who intentionally run over animals in the road. I'm just saying ... why?

"Drivers may run over wildlife for kicks and others may think they're doing everyone a favour by killing a snake since they aren't well liked, he said. But reptile roadkills are a problem because reptiles are declining, and turtles, unlike raccoons, take longer to become sexually mature, meaning they're killed on the road before they can reproduce.

Drivers should watch the road and slow down to avoid hitting wildlife. He suggests being very careful if you try to get the reptile across the road and always send the reptile in the direction it was headed."

It's becoming more and more well known that people who abuse animals are more likely to also abuse humans. So if you're one of those turtle-flattening creeps, please just stop it, and keep your sordid history to yourself.

Via.

And here's a Monday afternoon roundup of the news stories that that were.

300 Pound Turtle Found In Virginia Beach Is Pregnant
Test shows rescued rare turtle is likely pregnant
Turtle nesting season slows to a crawl
Speedy reunion for roaming tortoise and her owner
Stolen tortoise was considered family to Berwyn resident
State outlaws ‘entombing’ of gopher tortoise
30 - SU marine lab prepares to release green sea turtle
A rare turtle finally gets a break
Solar Powered Bionic Turtles
New law protects threatened gopher tortoise
Rare tortoise believed to be stolen
House lights draw baby turtle to pool
Sea turtles are coming & going
Experts Seek to Stop Turtle Extinction
Tiny tortoise taken from museum
After a slow start, turtle nesting on the rise

And what about Bob?
Tortured SoCal tortoise healing, officials say

The concept of the hive mind (the sci-fi variety) has interested me for some time. Specifically, as it pertains to humans in one of our societies on Earth, I often wonder: how would things be different? We as individuals would face a whole new set of challenges that I struggle to even imagine. So many of our daily activities, thoughts and conundrums exist because we don't know what another person is thinking. How can we get the client to like our pitch? Will my boss give me a raise? What is this car really worth, and what's the lowest price they'll give me? Is that gorgeous man interested in me or not? Those questions: wiped clean by the wrath of god. (Or, whatever. I will always make movie/TV references that you will not understand.) Indeed, there would be few questions at all. Would the question mark even be? Would we live life without the interrobang‽ It's hard to imagine what issues we would face, if we each as individuals knew everything without having to ask.

But I can tell you this. If turtles were able to communicate with each other through their minds, this would not happen:

House lights draw baby turtle to pool

Hatchling loggerhead sea turtles are blessed with much knowledge. That they even know to sand-paddle to the sea is an amazing feat of evolution. But if this poor pool-bound guy had a little help from his siblings' brain waves, well, he wouldn't have wound up swimming alongside floating lounge chairs with built in beverage holders. In conclusion: turtles do not have E.S.P.

Tune in again next Tuesday for a new installment of ... What if turtles had E.S.P.?

As far back as I can remember in my life on the internet (which began in the early 1990s) I've been involved in the reptile and amphibian scene. And as far back as I can remember when it comes to turtles, David Kirkpatrick has always been the authority on shelled aquatic things.

When you google him, you get his home page at UNC which hasn't been updated since 1999. Yet, you'll still find that link all over the web. Here's a link to his turtle articles, as of 1999 at least.

Who knows how many turtles he keeps now, or how many more of his turtle articles are out there somewhere. David, do you copy? Are you still around?

Of course, I could try his e-mail address, but I don't really have much to say. I just wanted to give him a cross-country, cross-millennium high five.

There is so much strange stuff going on in this story that I don't know where to begin.

Saturday, August 4, 2007, Anita Lewis gathered some household possessions to sell in a rummage sale, while her husband slept. I'm all for independent women; I'm wildly independent myself, to a fault, most would say. If you want to sell your stuff, go ahead and sell it, and your husband's opinion be damned, is what I always say.

But apparently Anita is not the kind who can be trusted with sorting through household possessions. She chose to sell a ceramic turtle that lovingly held her husband's late ex-wife's ashes. Right now, I'm trying to figure out if "late ex-wife" means simply that his wife died, or that she was his ex-wife before she died; not that it has much bearing on the story. Except that it would be strange, I'd think, to be the keeper of one's ashes whom one has divorced. But many of the articles say "late ex-wife" and I know if I were writing the story I'd simply say "late wife" but that might just go to show what I know about how late wives are described when one has taken a new wife since. Some articles simply say "previous wife," which to me suggests that none of the reporters really know the circumstances surrounding Marcia Lewis's marriage/divorce and/or demise.

So anyway. The Lewises, it turns out, have a house full of turtles. They love 'em. And who can blame 'em? But wait! It was Terence and his previous, late ex-wife Marcia who collected them! And Anita decided to sell all these turtles while her husband slept, and she also somehow forgot that this large ceramic turtle, whose lid was fused to the rest of it, contained the ex's ashes? This woman is shifty and is not to be trusted.

Once Anita's husband woke up and discovered his ex-wife missing, Anita started a frantic search for the woman who bought the turtle for fifty cents, allegedly to use as a cookie jar.

But where was the turtle found? A thrift shop. Lies, lies, lies! What is it about this turtle jar that brings out the worst in people? So far, deception, lies, and negative energy all around.

Except in this picture. In this photo, doesn't Anita look like she took it on Antique Roadshow and learned it's worth about a billion dollars?

And yes, you have to inspect the photo very carefully to see that that's a turtle.

Via:
Human Ashes Accidentally Sold at Rummage
Turtle Ashes
Update: Turtle holding ashes back in owner's possession

In case you didn't read the turtle tribune last week, here's what you missed, and it was quite a lot:

Turtle slaughter in WB
A turtle makes you fertile?
Gopher Tortoise Rules Change
Let there be DARK
NOAA Fisheries Service Issues Rule to Improve Sea Turtle Bycatch Monitoring
Are you a reptile killer?
Spanish Deputy PM becomes godmother to a baby Galapagos tortoise
Locals no longer at loggerheads after turtle sanctuary destroyed
Malaysia plans to clone rare turtle
Bob the Tortoise is Slowly Recovering
Turtle Farm manager gone?
Sea turtle nesting drops in Pinellas
Missing tortoise found 20 yards from pen 7 hours later
Bob the Tortoise on a Rocky Road to Recovery
Researchers rescue endangered turtle hatchlings from busy beach
How 19 babies have doubled rare species
Mill Mountain Zoo's tortoise makes a 'run' for it
Turtle eggs smuggler arrested
A Turtle’s Dream Come True
Turtle Nest No. 1 finally hatches
Fewer turtle nests part of natural cycle
Rare tortoises bred in home incubator
Turtle release programme in motion
Researcher studying state of three turtle species in islands
Tracks point to turtle comeback on Galveston beaches
Frequent hurricanes decimate sea turtle beaches
Pet tortoise an 80-year obligation