What kind of mother is THAT ??
At last report I had a turtle in my back yard, which was Sunday. I thought it was just looking for a pond, stream or lake. Boy was I wrong. On Monday I walked out back and saw it was STILL THERE. It had burrowed down into the dirt a little and looked like it's breathing was labored. Every now and then it would push up a little and I thought it was stuck in the dirt and too exhausted to get itself out. Boy was I wrong. All of a sudden it hit me...perhaps it's a female laying eggs! I got a stick with a little bit of a fork on it, hooked that under the back edge of the shell, picked up a little, and looked under. Eggs!
Later on in the day I looked out the window and saw she was leaving. So I went out and looked. The eggs were covered and she was leaving because that's what they do. They let their young fend for themselves. I told a female friend of mine who said "What kind of mother is that??"
Now, I don't know how to cook turtle eggs and I wasn't going to have turtle soup either. I don't want to kill them. I'd rather not have them in my yard but not at the expense of their lives. So I looked them up:
Chelydra serpentina serpentina
On a different site I found that the eggs can hatch from 3 months to 120 days. SO I made a circle of small stones around the area (to remind me not to mow there later) and wrote down the date (6/12). Will keep a watch in mid-September.
Here she is, abandoning the kids.
And I placed a brick next to her for size comparison.
posted by Tim B. @ 9:11 PM
6 comments
6 Comments:
Well that shoots down my theory that the turtle was a male. On Florida beaches it is against the law to disturb a leatherback turtle nest. As a matter of fact, during the laying season, houses on the beach cannot use outside lights because it disturbs laying turtles. Debbie released her sliders recently, wonder if she would be interested in an infant snapping turtle.
Think about it, no diapers, no bottles, no crying in the middle of the night, no teenagers, hmm....maybe turtles are more evolved than we thought. LOL!
That's funny about the light disturbing the turtles. This turtle was laying eggs in daylight. I went all the way out there and poked and prodded with my stick, thinking the feet were stuck in the dirt, then lifted it up to see the eggs. It never stopped that turtle from laying eggs.
So that leads me to believe that some environmentalists are overly sensitive.
Whenever there were turtle nests at the beach at Longboat Key (there were none this year) we were asked to hide all lights from our units that faced the water because when the eggs hatched the turtles would head for the light and that would lead them away from the water, where they were supposed to go.
Are you near water? If not, when the time gets closer, you might place some kind of tub w/water so they will live until you can see that they've hatched, and can take them to water.
I am maybe 1/4 mile from water, which seems like a long way for a turtle. When it comes time to hatch (Sep 12-Oct 12) I'm just going to watch to see what happens. Maybe hawks will come, maybe not.
If the turtle had laid the eggs in the vacant wooded lot next to me, I wouldn't have even known, so I'm just going to let nature take its course. Snapping turtles aren't endangered.
Post a Comment
<< Home