Sunday Morning Turtles

 

Happy Sunday!

Turtle Power

About two months ago we had a lot of rain.  When I arrived home in the afternoon, the standing water was from the road all the way to the awning of the RV.

Good thing I had rubber boots in the car.

We had more rain over the next few days.

One day while driving home, I saw a large turtle (tortoise?) on the side of the road, and I pulled over and scooped him up.  I had a nice-sized cardboard box in the car, because apparently I have become my mother, who used her car for extra storage.  I currently have a box of saltines in my car.  You know, just in case a saltine shortage breaks out, or I need to leave a trail of saltine crumbs in the forest like Hansel and Gretel.

I took Mr./Ms. Turtle/Tortoise home and had a little photo shoot before the release.

Then I set her down in the grass, and she refused to budge.

So I took her inside the fence and put her into the wading pool to spend the night.

I took her to a low grassy area near the swamp and let her go.  I would like to report that she turned gratefully to me and waved goodbye, but she did not.

It occurs to me that the excessive rains displaced her.  Most of the time when there’s a turtle on the road, they are intent on heading north and it’s springtime.  This one was sitting on the side of the road facing south, just sitting still.  She made no effort to get away from me.  Dazed and confused, I suppose.

I haven’t seen her back on the road, so I suppose that’s as good an ending as this story will get.

I have no clue what kind of turtle she is.  I found a really good site where you check off what the physical characteristics are on the list, and then click “search”, and the site returns the possible choices.  I have either discovered an unnamed creature, or I don’t understand the choices.  Hard or leathery shell.  Flat or rounded shell.  How many scutes.  Coloring.  Neck stripes.

Clearly, the solution is that I have discovered a rare beast.

Into the Swamp

Our friendly tree guide with an arrow marker showing which way to go.

Sugar has been wanting to go on a swamp trip.  No, really, who wouldn’t want to go into the spooky ole swamp in a boat with no motor?

Apparently I was waving my hand wildly in the air in hopes of being chosen to go.  Yup, that’d be me.

Sugar has had his eye on a used boat.  He finally struck a deal, and we set off for the canoe trail at the Webb Wildlife Center.  The trail is about 1 1/4 miles long, it starts at the landing next to the observation deck, and ends at a fresh-water lake.  The part connecting the two lakes is swamp.  Seemingly endless miles of swamp.

Heavy-duty swamp action begins here at the landing.

The hole at the bottom of the boat needs a stopper applied on the inside, like the stopper to a wine bottle. I cannot stress enough the importance of this stopper.

I only took pictures on the return part of the trip.  On the way out, I was too worried about boat spillage due to the ineptness of the bow-person (namely me), but my fears were unfounded.  Also, fortunately there were markers on the trees indicating which way to go. 

When the boat entered into the waters with the green floaty stuff, I heard a sound, a soft “ssssssssss” of the boat sliding through the floaters.  That sound, and an occasional bird call, were all we heard.

So here’s our swampy fun…

This was the lake at the end of the swamp. There were three alligators near the bend who were gracious enough to move along.

Same shot as above with less sky and more lake. There's a submerged log close to us, and this seemed like a good place to turn back, what with alligators and all.

Lot more tree pictures coming. If you don't want to look at trees, then you'll need to go look at someone else's blog.

As you leave the fresh water area, you'll see floaty stuff on the water. Soon the surface of the water is covered with a carpet of green, but it's not algae. It's floaty stuff.

A watery green carpet. Fallen leaves were resting on the surface. We are definitely in the swamp now.

A peckerwood!

The shadows dapple the surface of the floaty stuff. We could stick a 5' long oar into this and not touch bottom.

Invisaturtle

 

Turtle-spotter looking festive and patriotic completely by accident.

Almost back to the landing! The observation deck is in the middle left of the photo.

And the sky was Carolina Blue.

Another stolen election

The best turtle ever

Last week Kyle the Turtle was in a local newspaper popularity contest called the “Top Dog”.  Yes, it is apparent to me that Kyle is not a canine, but he was still eligible to run.  Don’t ask me to explain – this is the South – some things are so bizarre that they are unexplainable.

Long story short – Kyle lost.  But the contest administrator cut off the contest at 11:13 AM, more than TWELVE hours before the usual deadline.  What could this mean?

I’ll tell you what it means, turtle lovers.  Kyle had crept from behind, from last place, into second place, dogging his opponents until he had 42 votes with the first place dog having 44 votes.  Votes were coming in all over the globe for Kyle, from as far away as London and New Zealand.  (New Zealand, people!  That’s as far away as the moon.)  The turtle was unstoppable, until they stopped the contest.  What were they afraid of? 

We were robbed.

Robbed!

Unstoppable!

We'll be back in 2012!

Neither teenage nor mutant nor ninja…

Kyle out for a morning stroll

Two weeks ago I acquired, by default, a box turtle.  Some nice tourist folks saved Mr./Ms. Turtle from a parking lot and named him/her Kyle.  They called around to the area vet’s offices, and so now Kyle lives at my place in the woods.  He has his own special yard safe from clumsy dogs and curious cats.  His yard faces east, which is what box turtles are supposed to need according to the internet, and has a shallow watering hole, a ramp for sunning, and sandy soil for digging, with lots of leaf debris. 

Kyle has basically been in hiding for two weeks.  He seemed to enjoy digging under the ramp.  This morning, when I went outside to feed him, I caught him sunning in his watering hole.  By the time I got the camera, he was out of the water and heading for the food. 

You are not supposed to remove a wild turtle from its area.  But Kyle’s area was full of cars, and he had been recently damaged.  There’s a piece of shell missing along the edge above his right front leg, and there’s old damage to the back left edge of the shell, and there’s what looks to be a repaired crack along the top of his shell.  He’s possibly about ten years old, and could live for a very long time. 

I hope he likes cats.