A lady not far from me has had this don to a tort a year or to ago. I was at a candle party when her freands started talking about it. thay thout it was so funny said it looked like a little keyring. I asked why the hell it had been don and thay said to stop it running off I pointed out that a pen would have don the job i also told them how sick it was to do that and that it was likly illigal. Thay said it was don by an exotics vet localy but would not give a name The lady who owns the tort was not there so couldent talk to her but i made the otheres think differently about it.

__________________

THE BEAK OF A DUCK

__________________

When I was a kid a friend of mine had a tortoise, he thought it would be cruel to drill a hole in it's shell and tether it, so instead he painted the tort's name and address on the shell in case it wandered, as it often did as the garden was hardly secure.
Of course these days we know that's probably just as bad, if not worse as the paint probably had loads of lead in it (this was the early '70s, when toxic substances were routinely added to just about everything!).
We've come a long way in the past 30 or 40 years, but amazingly there are still people around for whom time appears to have stood still with regards to the treatment of animals.

i had a tort called tommy with a st georges flag painted on it in the late 70's, and it had a hole in its shell that i didnt use but the previous owner must have
some tit pinched him after four years unfortunately .

Such a tethered tortoise lives in a garden near a friend of mine. Its a secure garden but the tortoise only gets enough string to just get to the side wall while it is tethered in the centre. Poor tortoise. Its obviously had the hole since the 'old days' but why bother tethering it if they aren't even going to give it a decent amount of string to go exploring. A bit belt and braces. The people are just doing what they always did with their tortoise. I wouldn't do it to mine but then tortoise keeping and the general attitude to pet keeping has changed a lot over the years.

A nasty business and yes I have heard of it, It must confuse the animal as well.