Julie Zickefoose: Raising Box Turtles

Wow. This Labor Day Weekend has been entirely too much fun. I did do a bunch of weeding and trimming and cleaning up, working out in the sun with the cicadas and crickets singing to me. Which I consider fun. We also went to the county fair and I whipped myself into a photographic frenzy, all those fancy chickens, baby pigs and midway lights. Wooo. The stuff of many posts. Just thinking about uploading all those photos makes me sleepy.

It's all I can do to put a post up. I feel like lying on a chaise lounge instead, falling asleep to cricket songs. But I'll show you the hatchling box turtles we're raising for release on our sanctuary. The idea is to raise them until they're big and strong and able to withstand chipmunk attacks and the like, thus giving them a better start in life and better chances of making it to reproductive age. You feed them like crazy, give them sun and exercise, hibernate them in the winters (well, at least I do) and then let them go. It can take three or four years, although some people who don't hibernate them and keep them under lights can get them to release size in a year and a half. Release size is 3/4 lb. Yow.

We've had Shoomie for three seasons now. He hatched in captivity from captive parents kept in a palatial turtle enclosure by my biology professor friend Dave McShaffrey of Marietta College. I believe Shoomie's almost ready for release; he has bulked up tremendously on Repto-Min Aquatic Turtle Food Stix. The tough part will be convincing Liam of that. Shoomie is Liam's turtle.

Every fiber of Shoomie wants to head for the woods when we take him outside. He's an adventurer. He's also kind of cranky and impatient, and is the only reptile I've ever seen throw a tantrum.

Before I learned about the Repto-Min regime, I used to try to get him to eat things like butternut squash and cantaloupe and strawberries. I'd put mealworms on top of them, or wiggle the bits with a straw until he was inspired to take a bite. Once Shoomie got a big mouthful of baked squash, realized it was probably good for him, and went on a stomping, head tossing rampage around the tank, plowing the remaining squash into the dirt. Twicked again.

Shoomie only wants live food. I got him to snap at the food sticks by putting them in his water dish, where Brownian motion made them swim around. He immediately snapped and was hooked.

Liam escorts him around the yard, always remembering to bring him back to his planted terrarium when the walk is over.

This little hatchling came to us only this month. A woman had found it in her suburban yard, hardly turtle habitat, as a tiny hatchling, and raised it for almost a year on, of all things, hard-boiled egg. She brought it into the local pet store looking for advice on raising it for release, and the manager contacted my dear friend Leslie who called me. Apparently egg is a great hatchling food, because this little turtlet has the hardest shell and brightest eyes I've seen since Shoomie. She's strong and energetic , full of beans.

I was a bit concerned that this turtle be exposed to live foods, too, so it would know what to do in nature. I think it expects hard-boiled egg wedges to drop out of the sky each morning. So yesterday I dug a couple of small earthworms and, after careful neck-craning and consideration, the turtlet grabbed them. Hooray! Big sigh of relief. Now I need to get her to take Repto-Min to keep that growth rate going.

No, I'm not sure of the sex of these turtles. Shoomie has a thicker, shorter tail, while Shelly's is long and thin. That may indicate that Shoomie's a male and Shelly's a female, but I don't know that for sure. Males don't get their red eyes for quite a few years, and I'd imagine that the hollowed-out plastron characteristic of males also takes some time to develop.

Phoebe renamed the new turtle Shelly. She's got her dad's gift for naming things (He's responsible for Chet Baker's name).