We walked out of the house this afternoon and found a TURTLE! We did some research and think we have a female Eastern Box Turtle. The girls have been playing with the poor thing. They turned it upside down and rocked it back and forth while singing "Rock a Bye Turtle." There's more, but you might turn us in to the SPCA. Suffice to say that the turtle is alive and keeping us quite entertained. I put the kabosh on the rough play. I did report the sighting to a turtle conservancy. Apparently, while not unusual or endangered, box turtles are losing habitat and therefore being watched carefully. We will return Shelly Carolina BoxTurtle to the wild very soon.
(The girls chose "Shelly" before we figured out its gender. It works. "Carolina" is for the species of turtle. BoxTurtle is self-explanatory)
2 comments:
Yes-s-s-s! Shelly bears a remarkable resemblance to Fred, who pottered around our yard in Plano for a few years, and then quietly disappeared. Long after naming the turtle, I determined that Fred was most likely female, but didn't pinpoint identity beyond "box turtle."
Other turtles came and went, but Fred motored steadily around the perimeter of the house and back fence every morning, enjoying the pie pan of lettuce fragments, tomato pieces, etc., that I put out most days. Then she would "disappear" each winter, only to return as the weather warmed. Those were stressful days for me, and Fred provided a steadiness that really meant a lot to me.
Shelly the turtle! I Love it! I guess if it had turned out to be male, it could have been renamed Sheldon. :)
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