Turtles

Sooner or later, I knew this was coming.  But I'll start at the beginning. Julie and I bought our house in 2008.  One day, Julie laid a rope out in the back yard in the shape of a pond, and started digging.  Of course I felt sorry for her, and started to help.  Ok I took over.  Using only a pick and a shovel.  The month after I started, she bought turtles from a source in Florida.  They ship the turtles overnight.  I built a temporary enclosure for them and continued to dig.  Three months later, we put in a liner and a pump. It ended up being 22 feet long, 8 feet wide, and 4 feet deep at the deepest point.  I think it's about 2000 gallons. In went the turtles. The first year, we put in a waterfall.  The next year, grass.  Last year, bushes and a garden.  And Julie thought the pond was too deep, so I filled it in a little.  It's a work in progress.  As in the grass keeps dying.  We're working on it.

The first turtles were a pond turtle (Moss), two western painted turtles (Dribble and Nick), and a musk turtle (Yoda).  We added a few box turtles that we rescued, but ended up taking them back to the forest when one of them drowned (I was able to resuscitate it by pushing it's legs into it's shell several times.  kinda weird, but it lived).  We rescued a wild cumberland slider with a huge bite out of it's shell, and also missing a tail.  We named him Sonny.

We had two surprises last year- two of our turtles had babies- the slider, Moss, and the musk turtle Yoda. On a side note, Bradley is upset that Yoda was a girl turtle  He tried to deny it for a while, and begged us not to let anyone know.  We have 16 new sliders inside out house now.

The turtles are pretty cool.  Mostly, they just like to sun themselves on the log.  They actually need sunlight to help them digest their food.  Other facts about turtles:
-Musk turtles get their name from the musk they emit when frightened.
-The largest freshwater turtle in the world is the Alligator Snapper.  They can weigh up to 200 lbs, and can be found in southern Alabama. And they do snap.
-Box turtles can pull their entire body inside their shell and can seal themselves in so tight they are nearly impossible to get out.
-pond turtles "hibernate" in the winter.  Their blood become a sort of "antifreeze" and they hardly move for 3 or 4 months of the year.  They burrow into the mud, and can absorb oxygen through their skin.
-a female slider turtle can hold 16 eggs inside her body for 2 years before laying them.
-the southeastern U.S. has more varieties of turtles than any other part of the world.

baby softshell turtle- very, very rare find!

baby snapping turtle- not an alligator snapper.  Notice the dinosaur-like plates on arm!

box turtle

female box turtle

Moss and a western painted turtle

baby map turtle.  Very hard to find at this age.

bottom of map turtle

a box turtle we named Spot.