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View from the fridge keeps tortoises cool
Shirley Neely's tortoises: left on the shelf
Shirley Neely has stocked up her fridge for the Spring season - with shelves full of slumbering tortoises.
The pets are hibernating - or chilling out - in their unusual home after their owner became concerned about the mildness of this winter's climate.
Mrs Neely, who runs the 75-pet Tortoise Sanctuary in Jersey, has placed her charges carefully alongside the more customary fridge fare of vegetables and bottles of wine and milk.
Metro revealed last month how wildlife experts were urging people to put their tortoises in fridges, to meet their hibernating needs until Spring.
Tortoises are meant to hibernate for up to three months between December and March, in temperatures between 3C and 8C.
But many have been waking up as a result of unusual winter warmth this year, and so storing them in a fridge seems one way of simulating more appropriate seasonal conditions.
Mrs Neely said: "It's much easier to maintain a constantly cool temperature with a fridge than it is with our ever-warming climate."
She gives her pets some fresh air each day by billowing open the fridge door - though a dinner party guest who looked in for a bottle of wine was taken aback by the curious sight.
Shirley Neely's tortoises: left on the shelf
Shirley Neely has stocked up her fridge for the Spring season - with shelves full of slumbering tortoises.
The pets are hibernating - or chilling out - in their unusual home after their owner became concerned about the mildness of this winter's climate.
Mrs Neely, who runs the 75-pet Tortoise Sanctuary in Jersey, has placed her charges carefully alongside the more customary fridge fare of vegetables and bottles of wine and milk.
Metro revealed last month how wildlife experts were urging people to put their tortoises in fridges, to meet their hibernating needs until Spring.
Tortoises are meant to hibernate for up to three months between December and March, in temperatures between 3C and 8C.
But many have been waking up as a result of unusual winter warmth this year, and so storing them in a fridge seems one way of simulating more appropriate seasonal conditions.
Mrs Neely said: "It's much easier to maintain a constantly cool temperature with a fridge than it is with our ever-warming climate."
She gives her pets some fresh air each day by billowing open the fridge door - though a dinner party guest who looked in for a bottle of wine was taken aback by the curious sight.
