Turtle Rescue

This is Ian. As we’ve talked about in previous posts, there is a lot of wildlife in our backyard. This can be a problem sometimes, such as when I mow the lawn, I have to watch out for the chipmunks that have now made a second burrow coming up directly in the center of the lawn;  but I never expected to have to stop completely for a rock, or at least what looked like one.

 

So as I am passing the chipmunk’s newest burrow, I see a rock slowly moving onto the lawn. Looking closer, I could see it was a turtle (later my mom and I found it was a female Eastern Box Turtle). I immediately called for everyone else, and needless to say, Eliza was fascinated.

I couldn’t keep mowing with a turtle walking around, so Lars, Eliza and I walked onto one of the forest paths to let the turtle go. Unfortunately, she wasn’t as excited about being carried around in a bike basket, and immediately tried to climb up the sides and out. Unfortunately, every time she had almost made it out, she couldn’t find anywhere else to hold onto and fell back into the basket onto her shell.

We also got to see plenty of other wildlife friends, such as another squirrel that scampered up the nearest tree, followed closely by Eliza. 

(The squirrel is about at shoulder level with Eliza on the tree in the middle)

When we had finally gotten far enough into the forest that we could safely let the turtle go, she had decided the basket wasn’t so bad and held on to the wire with her little claws, but we turned the basket on it's side and let her come out on her own.  Then she ‘ran’ away from us...

and hid under some leaves.

After returning home, finishing the lawn, successfully avoiding the chipmunks and researching the turtle, we discovered that they like to nest in forested areas after a storm. Our backyard has a very forested part in it (forested enough for a deer to come by for a snack), and we had just had a rainstorm a few days ago. Fortunately, if she had laid her eggs in our yard, she would have left them on their own and they would hatch in late summer by themselves. Unfortunately, if there is a nest, we won’t be there to watch the little turtles grow up. Another rainstorm has now made the nest virtually impossible to find, so we won’t really know for sure if she was just passing through or  if she had laid eggs in our yard.