Epic Turtle Save

          This morning's run was so jam-packed full of June, I had to come right back in and share it. I so enjoy seeing what's coming into bloom.

 

Moth mullein, Verbascum blattaria, is an import, but it's so lovely, and doesn't seem to overreach its welcome.
 I like how both the flower stalk and the water tower seem to have the same lean in this shot.
That's the tower that brings us our "town water." So lovely not to have to order and pay for loads of water, 1500 gallons at a time, to be hauled to the house twice a month, as I did for the first 13 years of life on the ridge. The well water was unpotable and unreliable, and I had to go buy five-gallon jugs of drinking water, too. The former owners of the house glossed over the water situation pretty thoroughly. Only after we moved in did we find their stash of dozens of plastic milk jugs, with which they hauled drinking water from town! I remember thinking that if I couldn't lift a five-gallon jug of water, I probably couldn't live out here. Still lifting them, too. Check out my arms sometime.

Hedge bindweed (Convolvulous sepium) has the most bewitching pink and white blossoms. You'd almost think they were petunias, for their size and happy particoloring. Nestled there amidst the yellow clover, at the base of the teasel, it has a rare beauty. I never let any bindweed grow, much less bloom, in my gardens, but I enjoy it when I'm out on the road.

 

New leaves of tulip tree (Liriodendron tulipifera) bend and wave under their own weight. I always wonder why juvenile trees have such enormous leaves. Maybe it's because they're in shade, and trying to get maximum surface area for photosynthesis.  But they seem to have a life force that can't be stopped.

 

Not everything I saw was sublime. Took me a bit to figure this one out. That's a Copenhagen tobaccy can. But what's with the stain? Well, when you've dipped your last chaw, then you unload your lip juice in the empty can, and you toss that out the window (because you don't want it in the truck). And then it leaks down across the road. Ain't that nice? The pleasure of figuring out this little phenomenon is followed by disgust. Who could trash a road like this? Almost everybody, apparently. 

 

 Along the way, I met up with my kind of folks: a cooperative meadow fritillary--the smallest fritillary, barely larger than a pearl crescent. I like taking photos of butterflies with my iPhone, because it's a challenge. You have to get verrry close. Like 6" away close.

It occurred to me that a photo showing its setting--in the middle of the county road on a Sunday morning--would be more meaningful.

 

So I hunkered down even lower and shot him in situ. 

 

 

Lord, I love this camera. I swung around, checking for oncoming traffic, which was very light before 8 AM on a Sunday. And I saw a little dark ellipse way up ahead in the road. And I thought, "Well, that wasn't there when I came by. So that means it's alive. That means it's a turtle. And the low profile means it's a snapper."

Compare the horizon trees in the fritillary shot and the turtle shot and you can see I had a good ways to go to get to that turtle. And as luck would have it, a truck was coming up behind me. I jumped up into the hayfield, off the road, so he wouldn't be tempted to swing into the turtle's lane to miss me.

 

And another pickup came from the east, and he was headed right for that little turtle. I sprinted up the last few hundred feet and swooped the turtle up just before the truck was able either to hit or straddle it. One never knows with pickups in southeast Ohio. Depends if there's a jackass behind the wheel, the kind that spits in a can and tosses it out the window. The same kind aims for turtles.

Oh I was so happy to have her in hand. Until she emitted an odor that brought me back to the years when I used to grow broccoli. If you've ever grown broccoli, you probably know the smell the plants get when you've harvested the big central head, and there's a hollow stem left. That collects rainwater, and it puts up a stench that's so ungodly you can't believe it's just a plant rotting. It has methane and sulfur compounds, I'm sure, as well as mustard gas. Well, this little turtle perfumed the atmosphere around us with rotting broccoli that seemed to come in waves. Lee-ord. I had to admit it was a nifty  deterrent to my ever making a meal of her!

 

Happy to be corrected, but I thought it was a female as the base of the tail was rather thin. Maybe there's a way to tell by the plastron. I'll wait for Boneman or Floridacracker to chime in. Fat little thing!

 And then she did the sweetest thing. It was all too much for her, to be suddenly airborne and closely scrutinized. So she closed her eyes. Do with me what you will, primate. You've got me. But I don't want to look at you. Checking out.

 

Her face with her eyes squeezed closed made my heart go flippy flop. And I decided at that moment that simply picking her up and carrying her across was not going to be sufficient. I would take her all the way down to the pond. Fergus' pond. 

This was not a trivial decision. There were many hundred yards of wet, waist-high June hay to navigate. And that was the other thing that made me want to help. It would take her days, maybe weeks, to get through all that, if she even could. 

 

I was careful to keep myself out of her sight as I pushed through the hay, and it worked. Her eyes opened and she took interest in her assisted journey, her low, jolting flight to freedom.

 

 If a snapping turtle can be dear, this stinky little pot of joy was dear. At least to me. And utterly docile, thank goodness. She didn't even push against my fingers. Good thing, because snappers are ungodly strong, and she'd have been a double handful.

  

I made a bad one-handed shot of a European skipper, my first of the year, as we trudged and swished along.

 

Her first sight of the water. I saw it flash across her eyes: Yes. This is where I want to go. Her front legs came out. She thought about air-paddling, but decided playing dead would be more prudent.

 

As we neared pondside, the ground got soggier and soggier.  But I wanted to get her in the water. I'd come this far, I needed to complete the job. 

 

 

Such a fine home for a small turtle. Here, she could grow into a leviathan.

 

Finally, with the water squishing up between my toes, I put her in a little rivulet that led right to the pond. I had no doubt she'd motor on down and disappear in the cool depths as soon as I left.

And I had several hundred yards of high wet hay to navigate back to the road, and another mile to run with sopping wet shoes and socks. And nothing was ever more worth that.

It had been a most excellent save, a most excellent morning. After all the turmoil and excitement of this spring, with two kids graduating the same weekend, and 1800 miles driven in the doing, I finally feel like I'm back in my body, like my mind, body and heart are hooked up again. And that feels wonderful.

Wishing you peace, and all the heady joy that June has to offer. Get out there. Just go!! Waller in it!

Things That Cross the Road

May's such a banquet, such an overstuffed portmanteau of good things, that the writer in me sputters and fusses, trying to find a theme in it all.

Perhaps "Things I See Crossing the Road" is as good as any. 

After a travel-enforced break this spring, I've rediscovered running. Totally ignoring my wise friend Hodge's admonition that "More is the enemy of good," I now feel like I'm slacking if I don't clock 4.5 miles a day. There's just so much to see and hear and smell and discover. It all pulls me along and down the dirt roads. The weather has been incredible. I'm brown as a berry and feeling more fit. Kind of a human red eft, looking for new water to swim in.

The tiniest red eft I've ever seen. Red efts are the juvenile dispersal unit of the red-spotted newt. Red efts are how newts get their DNA to new wetlands. They have thick, dessication-resistant granular skin with loads of toxins in it. That's aposematic, or warning coloration there. Don't eat me. I'm on my way.

I couldn't imagine where this little fellow had come from, crossing our driveway. The nearest pond is 1.3 miles away. How does something like this make its way through a gigantic thick hayfield? Well, he had to have. Underfoot, unseen, tiny creatures are making incredible journeys that we cannot even imagine. Everybody has a journey, whether we see it or not.

So tiny, so determined, going I know not where. Headed in this direction, he

 would hit our stream eventually. I suspect he knows that. Perhaps downhill=water?

The next morning I found another eft, but this one much older, darker, nearing adult coloration. I checked--skin still thick and grainy, but thinning, moister. When this animal hits a suitable body of water, he'll stay there for good. His skin will become membranous and thin, and he'll hang suspended, his legs dangling, just beneath the surface, watching for a mate. I think I can see the beginnings of his manparts at the base of his tail.

I picked him up and carried him across. Good luck with that hayfield, my friend. Navigating that would have to be like me making my way through a canebrake or a bamboo jungle. I guess part of how I look at wild things is putting myself in their bodies for the time that I observe them, thinking about how the world looks and feels to them. But I don't presume to make a judgement and take them to "better" habitat. This eft was headed away from the only pond in the area, headed who knows where. He's an eft. He knows. Who am I to short-circuit his plan? Lemme go!! I got places to go, people to see.

She's a box turtle. She knows, too.

But she is definitely getting a lift in the direction she's headed. When she saw me she turned around quickly and tried to go back, but I carried her in the direction she was originally heading, knowing she'd attempt her journey again when the coast was clear. Chetty saw her first, sprinted to her, gave her a quick tap with his nose, and kept going. Wanted to make sure I noticed her. 

What a beautiful jewelbox she was, with those amazing golden peacocks displaying all down her back. She also had slug guts smeared all over her beak and throat. Nice breakfast. No car would get her this time.

Speaking of slugs, I lost my beloved rehab box turtle Sluggo this winter. He had been injured by a lawnmower in August 2011, and I was waiting, years it turned out, to see if he'd ever really walk again. My best guess is that he overheated in his hibernation tank when the January sun slammed into it. I had set a bat tank atop it and had them both in the basement by the glass door because it was too bitterly cold to keep them in the garage. Well, the sun came out and the 2" airspace I'd left wasn't sufficient to keep the lower tank cool. He couldn't really bury himself in the deep moist medium, and he cooked.  It was a cruel lesson, to lose him that way. I reminded myself that Sluggo was going into his third year of rehab after his spinal injury, and still hadn't regained any meaningful use of his hind legs. He couldn't right himself when he turned over, could only drag himself with his front legs, couldn't dig, and would in all likelihood never be releasable. I didn't want to keep him until I was too old to care for him, and saw that coming down the pike. Sadly, that's probably what would have wound up happening. He'd have outlived me, but he never could have been a wild turtle again.

That didn't keep us from loving him.

Such is rehab. You win some, you lose some. My heart sinks and breaks a little every time someone calls me with a broken turtle. It's always such a long and often sad road. I remember a young hippie couple who drove all the way from Athens to bring me one who was literally in about six separate pieces.

 "We got all the pieces!" they said hopefully.
 I looked at them and nodded. I guess they thought I could wave a magic wand and put her back together, like Humpty Dumpty.

On to happier things. I helped this giant leopard moth caterpillar across the road the same day I found the elder eft. This one looked as if it were about to pupate, and was perhaps on walkabout looking for the perfect spot. I see gobs and gobs of these big bristly black cats in fall.

And I'd always wondered why I never see the adult moths. People who've tried to raise them report that a tachinid fly parasitizes them, such that few ever make it to pupate.

This fellow looked healthy and clean to me. I wished him well and set him down on the other side.

Just the night before, I'd found an adult giant leopard moth under my porch light! What a piece of kismetic coinkydink is that? 

It was so beautiful, with these awesome false eyes on the pronotum. A big, clumsy, sort of friendly moth, not so different from the caterpillar to handle. A bit pinchy in the leg department. Less ooky, though. 

Maybe I'd helped him across the road last fall. 

Like our Rain Crows' song "Little Soldiers" says,  Pick him up, carry him across.  

Give it a listen.

CD's with free song samples in the right sidebar of this blog.