Tammy has a story: About two months ago, my brother brought over this tiny baby turtle he found in his yard. He thought the kids would enjoy it. They were all here and played with it and carried it around all evening. When everybody was ready to go, my sister put little turtle in one of the fish ponds. Well, I never could find it again and thought it probably had died.
But...on Tuesday evening, I was cleaning the pond and found little turtle just swimming around in that big pond with the 2 big goldfish. So I brought it inside, put it in a small bowl with some water and gave it some fish food. I am assuming it is an aquatic turtle since it had been living in water all this time. The next day, the grandkids and I went into WalMart and bought a fish bowl, some stones and aquatic fish food. I asked the kids what we should name the turtle....suggested Franklin, or Tommy or Timmy. Haven was adament that the turtle should be named Tammy. So....Tammy, it is.
Well, when Todd got here, he told me it was a box turtle, I said no, I'm sure it is an aquatic turtle, he said no, it has a box turtle shell. I looked up aquatic turtles on the internet, but it didn't look like a slider, or snapping turtle or any of the ones in the picture.
This morning, Haven came in and the first thing she said was, "Can I hold little Tammy? Oh, Hi Tammy, I love you!" Jadon and I looked up Box Turtles on the internet and sure enough, Tammy is a 3 toed box turtle. Box turtles do enjoy swimming and need the water, but they also need soil and rocks.....so....we will be heading to the pet store to find something more suitable for a box turtle to eat and to reside in.
I wonder if Tammy misses her goldfish friends and being outside. Too bad. She will just have to learn to love being carried around and played with by new friends.
More adventures to come, I'm sure.
Mema
1 comment:
I can tell that you are a conscientious mother, so I would like to point out that you have a wonderful opportunity to teach your children a lesson about wildlife and conservation.
There is a big difference between a pet and a wild animal, and it's illegal to keep wild caught animals as pets in many states. Box turtles are in trouble in most areas, if not everywhere, in part because too often people innocently take them out of the wild. This is very damaging to wild populations, since box turtles have a very low reproductive success rate.
Although turtles are quiet and very passive, they are difficult and expensive to keep in captivity properly. Wild turtles often die a slow death when taken from the wild.
Please release the turtle back to the wild. Box turtles are territorial and know their home ranges. If you release it somewhere other than where it was found, it's likely to wander, perhaps to its death on a road, and the local population probably can't afford to lose an adult animal.
With fall coming, it's particularly important to let the turtle go sooner rather than later, since it needs to get ready for hibernation.
For more information on box turtles, and why it's important to release them back into their home territories, you can check out these web pages:
http://www.pwrc.usgs.gov/neparc/Products/PDFs/NEPARC-turtlecard.pdf
http://www.pwrc.usgs.gov/neparc/Products/BoxTurtle.htm
http://www.mckeever.org/turtle.html
Good luck!
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