Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Look who we found today..


Tonight after dinner we discovered this beautiful turtle walking up our driveway. It was hot out, the high reaching 97 degrees today, and this poor guy was slowly working his way up the steep gravel driveway. We have no idea where he came from. The two creeks on our property are almost dry now and they both have extremely steep banks that we don't think he could have climbed out of. Needless to say, we were shocked to find him. We have never seen a turtle the whole time we have lived here.


He was scared of us and pulled in his legs and head. He had a lovely shell of browns, black and yellow. We decided that we couldn't just leave him because he was so far from a water source. I scouted out the two ponds in the area and we decided to take him down where the creek dams up and holds water on a neighbors property. We found a plastic garden trug and loaded him inside.


Once we got to the water I picked him up and set him with his front feet just in the water. He knew right what to do and jumped right in the water. He was one happy turtle!

After a few times of coming up to the surface for air he dove down and swam out of our sight. Hopefully we have found a long-term happy home for him.

5 comments:

Heather said...

I am so surprised! I have never heard of anyone seeing a turtle in your neck of the woods... I am going to see what native turtles we have in Oregon. Thank you for sharing this... I am going to show my son tomorrow:)

thyme2garden said...

Wow, a turtle in a driveway? I'm not sure where you're located, but if you're near Heather in Oregon, that doesn't sound like a big turtle habitat, especially since you said that you don't have a good water source near you. Looks like a big turtle, too, the kind I saw in Hawaii during a vacation. You did such a nice thing by driving him to the pond!

Shaheen said...

Thank you so much for sharing this. I don't know much about where you live, but beleive you when you say your not near any water source. So this is one really lucky Turle. It may hae been afraid of you, but it was Lucky because it had stumbled upon you and you helping it find its way to the pond. I am sure the turtle Thanks you.

Heather said...

Thanks for the link. I showed my son and he said, "oh yeah, we have turtles here". The 10 year old out does mom again. Of course, his favorite hobby is searching for snakes, salamanders and the like.

I had a little chuckle thinking of this poor little guy... finally making it to the top of the driveway only to be whisked back down to the creek. Slow and steady:)

NEURON said...

97 degrees sounds wonderful after the rain we had over here today. Love your Turtle,he chose the right driveway to walk up!