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. 

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!!