The two pictures above are of the turtle I found, dubbed "Cardboard". The picture below is the one William found several days later
, named "Sheldon."This past week we have really been blessed with box turtles. One day, I heard our neighbor's dog "Molly" (not her real name) barking down by the creek. She simply would not cease, which is unusual. I finally went down there to see what she was barking at, and it was a box turtle. I brought him back up to the house to show the kids, and we ending up keeping him overnight. Noah tried for about 30 minutes to devise a way to get him to "come out of his shell." Bailey even took him to church to show all her friends. Since we did not have a large enough cage for him, he spent the night in the bathtub. I looked on the internet for some info to tell the kids. We learned that you can easily sex a box turtle by two main characteristics. The females have brown eyes, while the males' are red or orange. Also, the males' shells are more rounded (taller) while the females' are flatter. We definitely(?) had a male.The next day we let him go. We also learned that turtles have a built in "homing device" that leads them back to their birthplace. So if you ever see a turtle crossing the road, put him on across instead of taking him back to where he started. Otherwise, chances are, he'll just try to cross again later.
A few days later William was out in the field and he came in with a box turtle he had found. We quickly discovered this was not the one we found a few days before. It was smaller, also a male, but the shell was misshapen, as if he had been assaulted by some animal or machine at some point in his life. We did not keep him very long, but put him back where he came from as well. We know there are so many wonderful animals in these woods, and it is exciting to find ones we don't see very often.
