When my daughters were small, and we would be traveling along a highway, I would occasionally spot a turtle meandering across the road. Much to their mortification and amusement, I invariably pulled over, backed up and stopped to give the slow-moving reptile an assist. Occasionally putting it in the floor of the car to bring home and release in the wooded area behind our house that slopes down a steep incline to a small creek. Setting it free in what I hoped was a safer environment where it could live for a hunderd years and enjoy making many generations of hard-shelled grand-turtles.
I was on my way home from errands this morning, and saw a turtle with a shell about the diameter of a salad plate crossing the four lane a couple of miles from the house. So: guess what I did? Yes! The Turtle Rescue Squad rides again!!! Made a U-turn, went back and jumped out in traffic to get the turtle (who acted like he really did not want/need me intervening in his plans), and put it in a box to bring home. He had remarkably long claws, and nearly got dropped when he put all four legs out and started 'swimming' in the air when I picked him up to turn him loose in the back yard. I was quite startled, and I am sure he was as well.
Then I remembered how my dad used to find turtles muddling around in his back yard, scooting through the flower beds, trundling across the expanse of lawn at the speed of practically nothing. He would go in his workshop and find a can of spray paint and squirt a small dot of color on the shell, so the turtle would be easier to spot in the future, plus he would know when he saw it if it was the same one or someone new had come to visit. I don't know how many different shells he squirted a dot of paint on over the years, but I know there were quite a few, and the idea of finding on that had taken up residence greatly amused his granddaughters.
I saw one some months ago, picked it up off the road it was trying to cross and brought it home, put it down in the back yard and assume it bulldozed under the chain link fence and made an escape into the wilds of eastern Muscogee County. It was only about the size of a small cereal bowl, and what used to be called a Box turtle, last seen wearing (a turtleneck? ha!) a brown shell with mottle yellow markings: tortise-shell colored, of course... Completely vanished, obviously having changing his attire (like the turtle in the BC comic strip when he takes his shell off) to make a clean getaway, but hopefully still alive and well, living someplace under an assumed identity in the Bull Creek watershed.
After this guy startled me so badly, extending all four legs with long claws plowing through the air, I quickly put him down on the driveway. And yes, I did get a can of paint and spray three little white dots on his black, ancient-looking carapacel. He was hunkered down, trying to look invisible, immobile, inside the fence when I left at noon, and completely vanished when I returned an hour later - but I will definitely know it's him if/when he reappears. Yea! Turtle Rescue Squad!
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