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Health & Fitness

Box Turtle Babies in the Garden

After finding a box turtle digging a nest in my garden, I protected the area and waited all summer in hopes of some turtle babies.

This summer has been very busy with wildlife at my house near Holmes Run Park. One day back in mid-June, I discovered a box turtle sitting in my garden. So what did I do? I offered her celery leaves and a strawberry. Because that's what we do ... right? We humans have this obsession with feeding wildlife. But after placing the treats in front of her, she just sat. And sat.

Finally she began to move a little bit, and I realized I had very rudely interrupted an important process ... she was digging a nest! Unfortunately, if she laid eggs there, they would be very vulnerable to predators. We've got a giant snake (Marcellus Wallace) who lives close by, our neighbors see raccoons all the time, and the squirrels have pretty much waged an all-out war on anything we put in the yard that might be edible. I knew after mama was done making her nest, I was going to have to protect those eggs.

I checked on her throughout the rest of the day and evening, but by 10:00 PM she was still out there digging.

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"Alright, Mama ..." I said to her. "I gotta go to bed."
I went in for the night and hoped for the best.

The next morning I went out to see if she was there, but she was gone. She didn't leave a trace — the ground looked completely undisturbed. I was impressed! I took a hose and gently sprayed the area with a light shower to wash away the scent of turtle-afterbirth. (I couldn't smell anything, but I worried that predators would.) Then I went to work building a turtle-baby-protection-fortress. I wanted to keep them contained so not only would predators stay out, but so they would stay in — and I wouldn't accidentally step on one.

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I took a roll of 1/2-inch mesh garden wire and cut a piece about 16 inches tall by 3 feet long. I rolled it into a cylinder and wired the edge shut. Using my fingers (so I could feel around and be as gentle as possible, in case I accidentally came across an egg), I carefully dug a shallow trench around the nest that I could bury the bottom couple of inches of the wire cylinder down into, to prevent an animal from digging under it.

After nestling the mesh cylinder into the ground a bit, I refilled my trench. I had some big rocks around my flower bed, which I placed around the mesh cylinder in a border, in hopes to further deter potential predators. Then I closed the top of the cylinder and placed two bricks on top (the mesh was strong enough to hold them without caving in) so that an animal couldn't lift the cylinder off of the nest.

Then I waited.

Two months passed. No turtles.

Three months passed. Still no turtles.

Then, finally, toward the end of September during my daily turtle check, I peeked down into the mesh and ... Turtle Baby!!

It was teeny and tiny (a little bigger around than a quarter) and for a moment I panicked and worried — what if it's been in there for days and days and I had accidentally overlooked it? I removed the wire cage and nervously picked it up and ... felt movement. Hooray!

I put him in a deep, wide bucket (the kind that's used for keeping several wine bottles cold) with a bunch of leaves, some moist dirt and dried grass, and a few roly-polys. I'm not sure if he would eat those, but I did know that turtle babies are carnivores, and that was the smallest insect I could think of to give him.

Since that area of the garden is pretty dry, I thought he could use some water. I took a shallow lid from a yogurt container and added a little puddle of water, then placed the turtle baby into the water. He hung out for a bit, then crawled out, so I figured he'd had enough. I put him back into the bucket and he instantly buried himself in the leaves.

The following day I gave him one more quick shallow soak in the morning, then we went over to Dora Kelley Nature Park, and I dropped him off with Mark at the Buddie Ford Nature Center. Turtles — especially baby ones — are complicated animals, and I would never have tried to keep him as a pet. I figured the folks at the nature center would know exactly what (and where) was best for the tiny turtle.

Mark told me later that they released the turtle close to the nearby stream where he would have plenty of places to soak and hide and eat and do all the turtley things that would make him a happy turtle.

I'm still checking for more turtle babies, but so far, I've only seen the one.

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