Turtles

A few months ago, the city put up a new sign in the road behind our house.

At first I thought it was out of place but little did I know that these little guys would be our neighbors.

While we were walking our dogs, my neighbor and I found this turtle in the middle of the road. She asked if I had gotten the flyer in the mail of what to do if we saw a turtle in the middle of the road; I hadn’t seen any flyer.

Well, another neighbor is a geologist and is studying these turtles; I believe he was the one responsible for passing out the flyers. We had no idea what to do with this turtle or how to handle it so we asked our neighbor the environmentalist for help. The turtle had already moved by the time we got back with our neighbor. He said the turtle was on its way to the nearby pond to lay her eggs. He also showed us how to handle a turtle in case we decide to help one cross the road.

This one is a snapper turtle. Their necks are so long and it is unsafe to grab them by the upper half of their shell because they turn around and bite. I don’t think we’ll be getting really close to them in the future.