The dogs discovered a new, small, puzzling friend on our walk Sunday.
Lucy is not sure
I walked right past the turtle and didn’t notice it until Zeke fell behind enough to pull on the leash. He investigated a little but lost interest. Lucy was afraid of it.
Nothing to be afraid of here
The turtle wasn’t particularly interested either. He stayed like this the whole time.
We walked on, and then it occurred to me that the only place this turtle could go is across the road. It was on the uphill side of the road, and there was a steep bank about 10 feet high and way too steep to climb. I didn’t know where it was going, but I thought it was too dangerous to let it cross the road by itself. So I put it on the downhill side, and hoped that was where it wanted to be.
Good boy, Zeke! If I had a dog, which I wouldn’t regardless, I’d definitely expect it to point to turtles!
So the second most fun thing in its class is to reply to a neighbor’s photo of a box turtle: “Yes, that’s Maggie. I found her June 2 2009, and you’ve seen her twice since then.”
I’d probably have made the same road side decision. Gives me the creeps to see the poor old turtle on the edge line like that. Male or female? Nicely patterned! You can always tell it’s spring, with male box turtles at least, if you didn’t know before.
Nice find! Really good of you to get it across the road safely.
Extra karma points for you.
I looked at the plastron, and I think it was concave. That’s indicative of a female, isn’t it? She, if she was a she, withdrew as I picked her up, and it made a neat pneumatic sound.
Actually, it’s the male that has the concave plastron. And it’s really an indentation not affecting the entire plastron, just the centermost area. Some turtles are hard to tell, and then I fall back on other approaches.
Some turtles can use the escaping air as they close up to make a decidedly hissing noise that sounds very much like an expression of annoyance.
Well, I had a 50-50 chance of getting it right, and, of course, I didn’t take the time to check. So, as I recall, it looked like there was an indentation right behind the part of the shell that closes on the bottom. Does that sound right?