Baseball size bladder stone removed from SF Zoo tortoise. Yikes!

[Kadie]

SAN FRANCISCO
Surgery on zoo's tortoise like fixing a surfboard ding
Dangerous bladder stones removed and reptile gets new fiberglass underbelly
Patricia Yollin, Chronicle Staff Writer

Wednesday, August 24, 2005

A desert tortoise named Cactus has traded in four bladder stones for a fiberglass underbelly.

snip...
"We faced a unique challenge," Dunker said Tuesday. "In a mammal, bird or anything else without a shell, this would be fairly routine surgery."

One stone was the size of a baseball and the other three were as big as golf balls. They added up to 553 grams, a little over a pound -- which is a lot for an animal like Cactus, who normally weighs 8 pounds and enjoys eating his namesake.

snip...
"Cactus was slow and not very responsive so we knew something was going on," said Joe Fitting, director of the zoo's Animal Resource Center. "He wasn't his perky little self."

more...
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/08/24/BAGJDEC3A844.DTL




An X-ray shows the bladder stones that were first discovered in 1994 in the San Francisco Zoo's desert tortoise, Cactus. Chronicle photo by John O'Hara

[Guy Fawkes]

1. "Cactus was slow and not very responsive so we knew something was going on"....?

A slow turtle? Ya' don't say!

[scarlet_owl]

2. Awwwww. Poor Cactus!

Here's wishing him a speedy recovery.