Scientist's Pet A Celebrity At 100 Gulf Coast Box Turtle Ranks As World's Largest

June 7, 1987|By Ruth Rasche of The Sentinel Staff

TITUSVILLE — For the past 22 years, Rick Blaney has been living with a century-old creature that loves dog food, corn on the cob, tomatoes and bath water.

His friend also is a celebrity of sorts. Dummy, as Blaney calls his pal, is listed as the world's largest Gulf Coast box turtle in the Peterson Field Guide of Reptiles and Amphibians of North America.

''Most people look at him and say, 'He's not so big,' because they're used to seeing larger gopher turtles,'' Blaney said. ''But he's 8 1/2 inches long, and that's really big for a Gulf Coast box turtle.''

Blaney, 45, who has a doctorate in herpetology, found Dummy in 1966 during a scientific study of reptiles and amphibians on St. Vincent's Island near Apalachicola. During the four-year study, Blaney compared color patterns and sizes of living Gulf Coast box turtles with fossil records from that part of Florida.

''From the study I found the turtle population in the area was identical to fossil turtles that had lived there 15,000 years ago,'' Blaney said. ''These turtles are a relic population left over from the Ice Age.''

Of about a dozen turtles Blaney collected in the early 1960s, Dummy is the only one he didn't ''preserve,'' which means taking the skull for further scientific study.

''I had no inclination to preserve Dummy, as I would have in most studies, because most animals don't survive that,'' he said facetiously.

Though he saved his pal from a scientific slide tray, Blaney said he doesn't consider Dummy a pet.

''The only reason Dummy even has a name is when something gets in your way around the house, you call it the dumb chair or the dumb table -- he's the dumb turtle,'' he said. ''Turtles are nice, unusual companions, but you can't really call them pets because they don't respond with love, they just sort of tolerate you.''

When pressed, Blaney concedes that Dummy does have some personality.

''He begs at the refrigerator door, literally gets up on his back feet and moves his shell back and forth when he's hungry,'' Blaney said. ''And when he wants to soak in water, he goes in the bathroom and bangs his shell against the tub until I pick him up and put him in it.''

Dummy is primarily a vegetarian, with lettuce, tomatoes, corn and melons among his favorite food. His diet is supplemented by ''a cheap, grainy dog food,'' Blaney said.

''He's never bitten anyone, but he did once open his mouth at a friend who was wearing red nail polish on her toenails,'' he said. ''I think he thought they were tomatoes.''

Blaney estimated that Dummy is ''well over 100 years old'' because of his large size and because the rings on his shell are gone. In telling a turtle's age, much like a tree's, scientists count the number of lines in the shell pattern, with each line representing one year.

''Dummy is so old his rings are totally worn off,'' Blaney said. ''But being old doesn't slow him down at all.''

Blaney keeps about two dozen turtles in a large enclosure behind his Titusville home. Dummy is the only one allowed inside the house, but he also makes regular visits to the pen. Some differences Blaney has noticed between Gulf Coast box turtles and their cousins, Florida and Louisiana box turtles, are that the Gulf Coast variety usually grows larger, lives in wetter areas and has a more flared shell.

''Turtles are interesting animals,'' Blaney said. ''They haven't changed much in many thousands of years, but we're still learning new things about them.''

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