It was something to get your mind around.
Arizona, a Galapagos tortoise, has not been using his right hind leg, so his owners and veterinarian brought him to Cornell University Veterinary Specialists, which opened on Canal Street in January.
There, the 300-pound Arizona, whose species walked the earth with dinosaurs millions of years ago, was sedated and wearing an oxygen mask. A monitor beeped his heart rate, and the red crossbeams of a laser shined on his shell as a technician positioned the state-of-the-art scanner.
Arizona lay on the table that slid him toward the imaging tube but his shell, nearly 4 feet long, was too big to fit inside. So veterinarians and technicians backed him up to it and extended his injured leg for x-raying.
"Good boy, Arizona," said his owners, a couple from Pound Ridge, N.Y., on the North Stamford border. They stroked the leathery, pebbled skin of his powerful front legs.
The couple has two sanctuaries for giant tortoises -- one on 12 acres in Pound Ridge and another on 8 acres in Florida. They do not want their names published to protect the location of the New York sanctuary.
Six of their giants are Galapagos, the largest of the tortoises, which can grow to 800 pounds and live for an average of 100 years. The oldest known Galapagos lived 152 years.
Because they are endangered, people may keep them only by permit.
Several universities have breeding programs, said Dr. Jeremy Sabatini, Arizona's veterinarian and owner of Pleasantville Animal Hospital in Westchester County, N.Y., but "there is no giant tortoise collection this size anywhere in the country. To have them here is a great experience."
Cornell University Veterinary Specialists offers 24-hour emergency and critical care, and mostly treats dogs and cats, said the spokeswoman, Anne Greenberg. Its specialties include cardiology, oncology, orthopedics, surgery and more.
It's the largest university-owned veterinary hospital in the United States, which means profits are used to fund research and education in veterinary medicine, Greenberg said. The hospital takes cases referred mostly from veterinarians in Fairfield, Litchfield and Westchester counties, she said.
"We offer our services to anyone who needs us," Greenberg said, including a mighty Galapagos tortoise.
The species likely originated in South America. Though tortoises are land animals, they are buoyant and can extend their necks above water to breathe. They can go months without food and fresh water, so they could have survived the 500-mile swim to the Galapagos, an island chain off the coast of Ecuador, where they thrived.
In the 16th Century, there were about 250,000 giant tortoises in the Galapagos. But they were hunted for their meat, oil and shells, their habitats were taken over by farmers and goats, and their eggs were destroyed by rats and pigs.
By the 1970s, there were just 3,000 tortoises on the islands. Conservationists began to breed them in captivity and release the juveniles back to the islands, and got the number up to about 19,000.
The Westchester County couple also has 44 Aldabra tortoises, the second-largest. They are a threatened species native to the Seychelles Islands near Africa.
Arizona is one of the few breeding Galapagos males in the United States, his owners said. In his mid-20s, he is just coming into breeding age.
In their colony of giant tortoises, Arizona is the calm, cool leader of the pack, his owners said.
"He's suave. He's smart. He's in charge without it being too obvious," one said.
"Even though he's not the biggest, he's the king," said her husband. "He gives the others a look and they go away."
In Pound Ridge, the giant tortoises spend most of their days grazing in a meadow.
"We have to rotate the pen areas a few acres at a time to give the grass time to grow back," an owner said.
Besides grass, they eat bananas, strawberries, cactus fruit and papaya.At night, they huddle in groups of three and four, often near stone walls, which retain heat from the daytime sun.
"If it gets chilly, we'll cover them with moving blankets," an owner said.
They also have a stone building with heated floors and large windows to let in lots of sun. At the end of the day, the females -- Clementine, Isabella and the rest -- can be persuaded to form a tortoise train and walk in, nose to tail. The males, especially Arizona, are less cooperative.
"We put pieces of apple down, leading to the door, but he eats the last one and starts to turn around to go back into the meadow," an owner said. "He has his own mind."
The vegetarian diet produces powerful reptiles. Arizona "can walk through a sheetrock wall and splinter the four-by-six beams without even knowing he did it," one of the owners said.
In the wild, giant tortoises are known to push over trees so they can eat the leaves.
A first look at the CT films Wednesday showed no obvious signs of fracture, tumor or infection in Arizona's leg, Sabatini said.
"So far, the films suggest a soft-tissue injury. If that's the case, we'll put him on pain medication and make him rest," Sabatini said. "We want to catch it quickly. Tortoises are secretive. They will act healthy until they're pretty sick."
Few places treat giant tortoises, so the CT scans will be shared with veterinarians, radiologists and others around the country.
"There's the Gladys Porter Zoo in Brownsville, Texas, the San Diego Zoo, one in Hawaii and few others," an owner said. "We all keep in touch. Once one of the tortoises had a fungus on his back and someone told us to put Vicks VapoRub on it. The fungus was gone in no time."
The weather is turning cold, so next week Arizona and the other giant tortoises will travel to Florida in a horse trailer modified for them.
An owner said she will miss the sight of the quiet, dignified tortoises sunning themselves in the meadow, necks and legs outstretched.
"They're totally at peace," she said. "As a species, I think they can be saved. They have to be. They've been around for millions of years. They have to be able to stay."
Source:Newstimes.com
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