Our friends gave the boys a turtle to "release" back into the wild of Lake Byron. So we brought it home, put it in a tub, gave it a name...with plans to release it the next morning or so.
I think the problem was giving the thing a name...Maxim wanted to call it "Swimmy" but he tends to name everything after it's most dominant characteristic. Remember "Shaky" the cat...I am surprised he doesn't call Brecken "Crazy" or "Screamy" or "Psychotic". Anyway, I came up with the name Phelps, because he's the best swimmer I know and this turtle is super fast compared to the turtles I have known before.
For the last 3 evenings, I have tried to get the boys ready to let Phelps go back "into the wild", but Brecken's heart completely breaks, and I can't bring myself to let the turtle go.
I am not sure what to do, and I even googled "what to feed a painted turtle".
I don't think I am the first parent to let their kid keep a wild animal for a little longer than it was supposed to be around, but with Brecken this is tough. Remember the dead baby rabbits he carried around for a day?
So for now Phelps is the guard turtle in front of our house!
8 comments:
Thinking back on some of the pets you and Sally had like Snooty the horse, always had a runny nose, Jumper the goat, Crystal the pure white dog and Flo the bird. See any similarities in naming of pets? Can't remember the cats name we had for awhile. I know Brecken can get to grandpa's heart too when he wants candy. Mom
I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but your instinct to release the turtle is absolutely right. It may be painful for Brecken, but it also may be an opportunity to teach him some important lessons about wildlife and conservaiton.
Please release the turtle where it was found. If it was on a road, you can place it about 30-50 feet away from the roadside, ideally in the direction it was headed at the time.
It's illegal to keep wild caught animals as pets in many states, and 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.
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.
These animals have many specialized needs. They're not easy to keep as pets, and wild ones often die a slow death in captivity.
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
Hey Mark from New York, (Yeah, I can get that information from the internet!)
Come out to South Dakota sometime and see the "endangered" box turtle population. They are so endangered that you usually only see 3 or 4 on the highway each day.
I think you can go back to living in your little diorama of a life in the big city, and us Midwestern folk will continue to patch our sod houses, drive our team and wagons to town and along the way rescue box turtles from their natural environment in order to let our boys discover them for a few days, so they can let them go later.
By the way Mark, do you ever wonder how we learned so much about box turtles?
Probably because some dad let his 3year old pick one up, keep it for a couple days and get actual hands on wildlife biology skills as a kid, then that kid probably went to South Dakota State University, studied wildlife biology and wrote a book that taught you about the awesome box turtle.
Have a good day in New York or whereever you are from...we will enjoy creation, "Where the streets have no name..."
G
way to go probably never been out of the big city
New York is actually a pretty big state, and I don't live in the city.
I've gained my knowledge of turtles both by volunteering to help protect our dwindling local population, and by reading as much as I can on the subject. And yeah, my interest in nature in general began when I was a kid and kept turtles, frogs, etc. All I wanted to do was share some information and encourage people release turtles where they find them. If that's the plan, there's no problem with keeping it for a few days.
It so happens that box turtles are imperiled in South Dakota according to the US Forest Service, see page 26 of this document:
http://www.fs.fed.us/r2/projects/scp/assessments/ornateboxturtle.pdf
Although you may see plenty of turtles along the road, that has nothing to do with the question of whether their numbers are declining, since they have a very low reproduction rate; only a handful of the eggs a female will lay over many decades will produce hatchlings that survive to adulthood.
Geez, sorry Turtle Boy (aka Mark), didn't mean to step on your toes.
But hey everyone let's hear it for our newest Living On Liquid blog reader Mark the guy who loves turtles.
We will name the next turtle our boys catch for a few days "Mark" in your honor!
wish thats all i had to do worrying about a turtle 2000 miles away
I think I know why the 'box turtle' may be an endangered species.
One time when i was in high school or college I was driving home from Lake Byron (where Tom and Breken live) and I drove over a box turtle with my pickup. The tough son of a gun kept crawling. So I did it again and it didn't even phase him. so I tried a third time with a little more speed and you know what? He just kept motoring along. He was probably laughing at me. Well, I finally got on him with my back tire and spun my tire on him and, well, you get the picture. I won!
So I now feel bad that I may have contributed to the endangeredness of the 'box turtle'. Sorry Mark.
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