September 2009

  • 5 Men Arrested for Blowing Up a Turtle

    By sarajean on 9/30/09 4:17am
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    They say that future serial killers often kill animals as children. After hearing a rumor about George W. Bush blowing up frogs as a child, I figured that maybe plain old idiots do, too.

    Perhaps it’s just a case of “boys will be boys”? Equally bad, if not worse things—rape, assault, etc.—have all been attributed to the old folksy saying. And while I’ve had trouble with the saying my entire life, many people chalk it up to normal male behavior.

    After inquiring after my husband if he blew up animals as a child, as well as several other male acquaintances, I determined that the answer to the question is decidedly no. So what is it that makes people, say, blow up a turtle?

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  • Would You Keep a Turtle if You Found It?

    By sarajean on 9/15/09 12:09am
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    As a child, I often kept box turtles as pets. We lived in my grandmother’s basement for a time, so it seemed a perfect place to let turtles roam around in. My dad, a carpenter, would build them “apartments” and things to play in, and I’d like to think they were relatively happy.

    That said, today we know that box turtles are a threatened species. Though habitat destruction and global warming are cited as key reasons why, a primary factor is the actual capture of box turtles in commercial trade. With a low reproduction rate and as many as 30,000 turtles being captured and sold in less than a four-year time frame, even laws against capturing the turtles don’t help much.

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