Thinking Inside, Outside, All About The Box. Turtles, That Is.

During the 60s my summertime activities included collecting box turtles. One summer I had seventeen of them wandering around our screened patio, looking for a way out. Did you know that box turtles can climb screens? I didn't either, but they can and did, sometimes several feet off the floor. Anyhoo, we named them all and got to know their various personalities, fed them fruit, vegetables and meat scraps, had turtle races, traded turtles between us, and at the end of summer, we let them go. Often we found the same individuals again the following summer. It was, you can tell, a major part of my childhood, finding and keeping box turtles. Once I had a snapping turtle, and several times I kept snakes, but summer after summer - box turtles.

Then in '68 we moved to Vero Beach, Florida, and my focus shifted to fishing. After high school graduation in 1971, I returned to Maryland, but had neither the time, the space nor the inclination to look for box turtles. The next time I saw one was in Ocoee, Florida in 1998, thirty years and many thousands of miles later. It was walking calmly across the driveway of F/X Scenery and Display, where I worked as a carpenter. No longer having any desire to keep wild critters captive, I watched it crawl into the scrub beside the driveway, and walked away. It did spark these same memories, but having no blog, they got away from me. Did anyone have a blog in 1998? Probably.

In 2009, nearly twenty years and many thousands more miles later, we were living in Albuquerque for Carmen's ministerial internship. One of the things we kept hearing people there complain about was the problem of snails in the garden. There was a pretty nice garden behind the house we were renting, so I looked up snails and remedies for same. Lo and behold, one of the best ways to control snails is to keep box turtles in your garden. Some garden supply stores had box turtles for sale. Carmen mentioned this to her peeps at the First Unitarian Church of Albuquerque, and it turned out that one of them had a bunch of box turtles, and would be happy to give two of them to us. We got them on our 23rd wedding anniversary. So 23 years is the Turtle Anniversary. Very soon after they arrived, the weather started cooling off, and Buckbeak and Fluffy disappeared until the following June! We gave them to Amy and Colby Landers for their garden when we moved to Pennsylvania in July.

In Meadville, PA, especially after the acquisition and marathon walking of the dog, I was always on the lookout for box turtles. The only one I ever saw was half the size of a teaspoon.

A month and a half after moving to Nashville, on our way to walk Grace in Edwin Warner Park early one morning, there was a full grown box turtle crossing Hicks Road. Carmen stopped the car, and I ran to pick it up before someone smushed it accidentally or intentionally. We let it go in the park. I hope it is thriving there! And I hope there will be more of them in my future. I like box turtles!