My New Pet Box Turtle

A friend emailed to tell me her son had found a box turtle crossing Pike Street, midmorning, in the middle of Marietta's busiest street.

This is what happens when we kidnap box turtles off the roads and out of the woods they know and bring them to our homes, then put them in our backyards to "let them go."
They strike out looking for something they know, sometimes in ever-increasing concentric circles, sometimes in a jaggedy line. Mowers, dogs, coons, cats, roads be damned. I'm looking for home.

Pike Street is five lanes of unrelenting fast traffic, a plastic strip full of gas stations and mostly plastic food. (Although I excuse Bar-B-Cutie from this broad-brush assessment. Bar-B-Cutie has real food.)

My friend wanted to know if I knew anyone who wanted a pet box turtle.  As in, "Do you want a pet box turtle?" She knew who to ask.

Any more, the notion of keeping a box turtle, or any turtle, as a household pet is repellent to me. Who are we to put a wild creature (and a threatened one at that) capable of living 130 years in a glass tank, to limit its world to a few square feet, to take it out of the breeding population and drop it into solitary confinement for the pleasure of feeding and observing it? And where is the pleasure in that, anyway? I love box turtles with a passion, but as pets, I'll take a dog any day. And you know which dog.

I told her to bring him on out so I could keep him for life as a pet in my rather expansive backyard enclosure. He paddled his legs furiously when he saw the area where I plan to confine him. An imperfect solution, to be sure, but better, I think, than being crushed by tires or given a life sentence he never earned. This way, the places he wanders through will have food, shelter, water, and very few roads and cars. And, given the season, perhaps a mate or two.

Piker showed some signs of having been kept in captivity for some time, including an absolute lack of fear and a flanged rear shell, but he was in excellent health, nice and heavy. Not interested in food. All he wanted was to go. Interestingly, when he got out into the big turtle confinement space, he began showing more appropriate fear responses. The reptilian brain is a marvelous thing. 

The Bacon eyed this new addition to the family.

Pet. Hmmph.  That is not a pet. That is a client, a charge, a ward of your duchy.

Piker, because you are clearly a faulty pet, and you need to be taught what to do, here is what a pet does. A pet hauls large branchtes out of the woods and brings them to his person for a surprise game of tug-o-war. See? She is laughing now. This, and other antics which are well beyond your capabilities, makes her laugh. A proper pet makes his person laugh. Unnf. Unnf.

 Go, now, live long and prosper, Piker. Your pet services are no longer needed. She will be back to check on you in the morning. You stick around now.

Oh my. I like my new enclosure a lot better than the old one. It has several pools!

Think I'll do some exploring. 

It's heading for June, and by the looks of this place, there should be some brown-eyed girls out there I can dance for. I will stomp my feet, nod my head and ask them for their claw in marriage. 

Making the Nestbox Rounds

One of the big excuses for going down Duck Creek Road is checking a couple of boxes I just put up at the Washington County Fish and Game headquarters. It's a private organization you can join for only $30/year. They have lots of woods that's open for hunting, but also walking and botanizing and stuff like that. I joined this year because I wanted to help their bluebirds and tree swallows. Plus, I've always loved their pond, and they have some very special streams in their woods. 

We check the subject of the Perfect Bluebird Intervention of April 12.  You'll recall that we took a rotten box off a tree,  and moved the nest that was in it to a new, protected box just before the female was to lay her eggs. 

Four beautiful two-day-old bluebird babies. Yesss!!

Glowing with pride, I walked over to the pond to see who was about.

On this beautiful May 6 morning, Chet and I found seven kildeer in the lawn (three of them week old babes!), then two spotted sandpipers, four solitary sandpipers, and four least sandpipers on the mudbar!

What a treat, at least for me, to see shorebirds in my land-locked county. Seriously. I never, ever get to see shorebirds unless I travel to a coast. Which seems to happen less and less.

Chet was less enthralled, and retired to the picnic table's shade to rest while I birded.

I have taken to tucking a bikkit in my pocket when we go on longer runs. Chet has figured out that I will give him the bikkit if he asks nicely.

That's a sweet smile, Bakie. Way to ask nicely. Bonus point for gutteral piggy grunt as you hoist yourself into the air. Here you go.

 Little monkey boy claims his prize. There's something to be said for a mature dog who retains the appeal of a puppeh.

Tree swallows have claimed the second box I put up, which I mounted to take the pressure off the bluebirds who I moved into the first box. Here, you can just see the female perched on the low wire to the right, and the male flying by on the left. This was taken May 6, 2015.

They've been adding to their modest nest, and sleeping and pooping in their box. Hoping they'll finish up their nest and start feathering it. I wonder if they're a young pair...very slow starters. But all my tree swallows are slow to start this year. Perhaps the flying insects are not yet at sufficient abundance to trigger nest-building.

Baker and I keep on heading down the May road, counting birds. We'd count 76 species this day!

Blue phlox lights up the woods. Mayapples are about to bloom beneath their green umbrellas. So much to protect from garlic mustard...

We finish our beautiful morning on Duck Creek and head through Whipple to Bonn to check more nest boxes. This morning, we'll check them all...

but not before saving my first of year box turtle (FOY BOTU, for those who love acronyms).

My heart sighs to see he met a car tire sometime last fall. The break is not fresh; it's partially healed. The turtle seems to be breathing with a little difficulty, and I watch him for awhile, but at length I decide that if he's made it through hibernation in such good weight and he knows where he's going, I'll just help him across and wish him well. Not much I can do for him at this point, and hauling him into care would only mess with his chances to mate this spring.

 It's a damned hard world for box turtles. We've laced their ancestral territories with busy roads, and expect them to "learn" not to cross. To look both ways and watch out for cars. Well, they haven't, and they won't, because they are wise and wonderful and knowing creatures, but they simply can't compete with traffic. And if we don't stop and help them across, they don't make it. Box turtles belong to slower, kinder times.

I check Biehl #4, to find the most artful tree swallow nest I've ever seen. They much prefer to insulate their nests with soft white waterfowl body feathers, but will take whatever they find. In this case, common grackle, mourning dove, and one goose feather. Whee! What a crazy nest! No eggs yet, but coming soon. These tree swallows have more than a touch of noir in their interior decorating tastes.

And in Biehl #1, where on April 23 there were three white eastern bluebird eggs, something had thrown them out when I checked again a week later. Today, May 6, I see evidence that tells me who dun it: tree swallows, who have brought a mourning dove tail feather and a piece of white Hollofil, as well as some trademark green grass and straw. The bluebirds have moved to Biehl #3, where the female has laid two more white eggs.  I know all this because I keep careful notes, and the white eggs are sufficiently rare that I'm sure it's the same female from Biehl #1. Otherwise I'd never figure out what's going on here. Sure enough, tree swallows harrass me as I make more notes at this box. They'll work it all out. With luck we'll have one pair of bluebirds and two of tree swallows in one yard: pretty darn good! I'm happy to help them all.

There are more Easter baskets to come, as we check Stanleyville Road and Indigo Hill. Stay tuned!

Three-Turtle Rain

Chet and I go along from his turtle discovery, up the mist-wreathed ridgetop I love so well.

It's thundering a little, and we're more than two miles from home. I consider leaving my iPhone in the barn at the old farmstead, but then I'd miss all the photos on the way back. Decide to take my chances. 

Good thing, too, because we stumble upon this electrifying scene as we approach the farmstead.

Holy cow. It's a three-turtle rain. This magnificent dark knight, a male, is investigating a golden jewelbox. I suspect it may be a female, from his obvious interest. I wonder if they peer into each other's shells, trying to find the eyes, to ascertain the sex of their new acquaintance. Red is boy. Brown is girl.

It's too late for mating, but it doesn't hurt to ask for her number.
And then my friend Dave McShaffrey, Marietta College biology professor, tells me,

"Julie-never too late for mating! The females can store sperm for years. My turtles mate well into the fall. When you don't bump into others of your kind too often it makes sense to take full advantage of the opportunity."

Well!! We leave them in peace, and though I'd love to photograph their interaction, my desire to let their behavior unfold naturally overrides.

I love the old-fashioned Hydrangea arborescens at the farm. I hadn't known it was there, or had forgotten, more correctly. Maybe I hadn't caught it in bloom.

It's just so right with the torn shade and the weathered siding.

Just below, several ebony spleenworts, most elegant of fernlets, sprout from the foundation. I've made a habit of watering them with what's left in the well bucket when Chet and I have had our drinks.

He does so appreciate his well water, and so do I. It's lovely to have a destination with a cool drink.

It hasn't yet gotten hot enough for me to salt my various routes with plastic jars full of water, but it's getting there.

We leave by the same road, and I resolve to check the sex of the golden turtle, if it's still there.

The Dark Knight is nowhere to be found, and this one is motivating out along a hayfield edge.

 Your eyes, madam, are brown.

 I'm thrilled to have found two box turtles interacting. It's something I've seen maybe four times in my life in the wild. Twice I've found copulating pairs. The other two times, just nosing around like these.
We head home.

Though you can't see him here, the middle Grace (the sugar maple) has an indigo bunting at the tippy top of her thinning hairdo, and he's singing for all he's worth.

We stop to shoot the bathtub that once served as a trough.

It has become a lovely self-contained marsh.  Every time I passed this tub I used to put a stick inside it to serve as a ladder for any unfortunate creature who fell into it, but someone kept removing my sticks. I'm glad to see this marsh. A small creature could survive until I could get to it, now that there's vegetation in there to hold it out of the water.

On the corner of our road, I check one of my bluebird boxes. I see a very fresh dropping that looks like it came from the female as she exited the box. I say this because it's quite large, as it would be had she been holding it for several hours as she incubates her eggs.  Ah. She's eating black raspberries, which are just coming in now.

I'm bemused to find her eggs all in a row, an arrangement I don't see. Usually they're clustered in the middle of the cup.

I smile as I realize that she likely kicked one egg out of formation as she exited the box in a hurry, probably as she heard me approach. The eggs are toasty warm, further bolstering that theory. I like having the time and mental space to come up with such theories. 

We arrive home to a warm greeting from the kids, who've managed to struggle out of bed.

Their phones lie on the table side by side. Liam touches the screens to show me what they've done. Ha!!

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.