Turtle Soup

There are times during your day, when you catch yourself wondering yet again, "How are FC's baby turtles doing?"

Here's a Chelonia Catch Up on the little rascals. For previous posts about their shelled shenanigans, go here, here, and here.

I can report that they are all doing fine although we do have one on a walkabout. There were eleven turtlings when we started and you may recall that one stayed in St. Augustine, at my Mom's garden pond. That turtle grew faster than all the others. I think my Mom spoiled him with good food and lots of attention. Just recently with the onset of cooler weather, he has gone awol, but we are hoping he is just hunkered down for the winter.















So, that leaves 10, but I gave two to another science teacher who has an inordinate fondness for anything turtle. They live in his classroom and are doing great.

That brings us to my 8 turtles, who are doing just fine. They live in a large shallow Rubbermaid plastic storage box and spend the days outside sunning atop the picnic table. At night I carry them in to the kitchen where they can avoid raccoons (usually) and other nocturnal predators.














They have grown although it may not be so obvious in the photos. They dine on Reptomin turtle food, lettuce, and various yard weeds.














I thought I would have ended my head start program for them by now, but we got attached, so we kept them a little longer, then there was hurricane season (they could wash out to sea), a drought (they need water), a meteor shower (their shells aren't meteor proof, what if ...? ) , bird flu (well, they're related ), ...

It seemed a little premature to throw them out amongst all that, so we allowed them to stay past their intended release back into the wild. Now it's winter, not the best time to be a turtle, even here in Florida.

So it looks like a spring release.

Of course, spring is forest fire season and it is kind of close to hurricane season ...