Bright and early on Monday morning I woke to hear Alyssa's excited voice declaring something about a new pet that Daddy brought home. I shook myself awake enough to learn that a turtle had been trying to cross the road right near Dave's gym and after seeing it almost get hit twice he stopped his car and picked it up. He was just going to set it in the safety of the grass on the opposite side of the road, when he thought it looked nice and decided to bring it home for the girls to see. That's my husband ~ the turtle rescuer.
I had to agree that it was a pretty turtle and the girls quickly took to making a habitat for it in an old sand box. I had my reservations about keeping it because before we got our gecko we were almost set on getting a turtle before our research turned up how messy they can be, and that they can also carry diseases like salmonella. With few exceptions, my belief tends to be that wild animals should stay that way. Upon closer inspection we realized that one of his front claws was damaged ~ enter exception numero uno to my above stated general rule. I felt sorry for the turtle and could just imagine it falling prey to an attack cat or worse.
This is how the turtle spent much of it's first two days with us...trying to escape the habitat {a seemingly hopeless endeavor with it's injured foot} that the girls had lovingly freshened with clean water, additional rocks and romaine lettuce on an almost hourly basis. It also hissed at Emma or anyone else who tried to pick it up. It slept in a cardboard box in our living room at night because quite often in it's attempt to get out of the sand box, it would flip itself over and not be able to right itself, so the turtle needed near constant supervision. The neighborhood kids were all taking shifts.
So, the turtle is not making a very convincing argument for us to keep it, and I'm not even sure it wanted to stay with us should we be willing to keep it, when suddenly everything began to change. It started to swim in it's habitat, happy as a little lark. It seemed to be eating some romaine, and it stopped crunching up in it's shell and hissing at the first sight of human hands. On day three of caring for him, we started to read about creating a more permanent habitat for it, and I discovered that this type of turtle {a midland painted box turtle} tends to bond very much with it's caretakers, even responding to their voice. Maybe this wouldn't be such a bad pet after all.
Whether it had just decided to accept it's new life in a purple plastic turtle sandbox, or whether it actually started to like us, remains unknown. He appeared content for three days, never trying to escape it's new home, when five days after Dave rescued him, he went missing. He was either finally victorious in his jail break, or something worse that I don't even think about. It was completely my fault for trusting that he could make it alone outside for the few hours between the time we left for gymnastics and when Dave would return home later that evening. I had debated leaving him in the cardbox box safe in the living room, but decided that he had seemed so much more content the last few days, that he would probably enjoy the outdoors so much more, and it would be fine outside.
The girls were
SAD, I was sad. Alyssa, who wouldn't ever even pick him up became very sentimental and cried that we didn't even get to say goodbye. I felt terrible. There has been a weekend long search party conducted by our girls and most of the kids in the neighborhood. They are still hoping it is somewhere in the neighborhood and that it will return in the next few days, but I think they also knew it preferred to be free.
So the brief time the turtle stayed with us has not made for the happiest ending to summer vacation, but the girls are fine, busy playing in the backyard with their friends and getting super excited to start school! I'm working on some vacation posts and feeling slightly overwhelmed going through the over 900 photos we took in order to do that. Happy Labor Day Weekend.
