Rosemont Tortoises Are 'Lifelong Pets'

Rosemont resident David Yaffee hopes his 2-year-old son grows to appreciate the family's pet tortoises. After all, the animals will likely outlive all of them.

Yaffee, a real estate agent and , has two pet tortoises, 12-year-old Oscar and 15-year-old Otis. He and his wife took the animals in, one from his wife's parents and one from a pet store owner.

"When they get like this, no one wants them," Yaffee said. They've had to fortify a section of their backyard, gluing a retaining wall together and adding concrete below a fence, to keep the animals from escaping.

They've also added a shed with heating lamps to keep the pets warm in the winter.

Feeding them is a lot of work, too. Yaffee said the family buys heads of lettuce by the case for the tortoises, and adds in home-grown tomatoes and hibiscus.

"By themselves, they could probably eat 10 heads of lettuce a day if we let them," he said.

Oscar's previous owner wasn't as disciplined with his diet, and fed him dog food, Yaffee said. That malnutrition caused the spikes on the animal's shell and eventually required surgery to remove excess growth, he said.

But other than that, Otis and Oscar are fairly low maintenance, Yaffee said. It's just a matter of finding someone to take care of them for the next hundred years or so.