The Healthy Parenting Blog

Turtle Update

Does anyone remember that turtle doing a shimmy in our flower bed months ago? I blogged on it; http://healthyparenting.net/blog/2007/05/12/banner-week/

So last weekend our neighbor across the street came running over (his kids were over our house) with a container full of baby snapping turtles. I didn’t get any photos of them but they look just like regular turtles except for a long tail sticking out of the shell. Snapping turtles can mess you up so avoid them. BUT the turtles got us thinking about the shimmy we were graced with and wondering if those eggs made it. It was about time incubation wise so we did a little digging and sure enough, we had baby turtles hatched.

Not sure they would have made it without us digging them up. With the drought, the dirt was so dry and hard, they probably couldn’t get out. A few eggs didn’t hatch and we weren’t able to find Ms Turtle’s 2nd egg batch (she laid in two places that we know of).

The babies were collected and all the kids and the dads drove them to a wet woodsy area and released them. Though thinking about a mama snapping turtle that shimmied somewhere around here 90 days ago is not a good thought. At least now the kids know what they look like so to avoid them.