Turtle Trouble

I save turtles. It hurts my heart to see turtles dead on the road, so whenever we are driving and see a turtle in the road we screech to a halt and move the turtle off of the road and into safety. I think it's because even though turtles can move fast enough to surprise you sometimes, they're still disadvantaged around cars.

This morning on my walk (on the way back from taking 250 new rose pictures!) I was surprised to see a turtle on the road only about 5 houses away from our house. When I got up closer I could see that it was on it's back, all closed up. I picked it up, trying to decide if it was dead. It certainly wasn't moving, and it didn't feel dead...not that I'm sure what dead would feel like. I decided to take it home to show the little kids.

They were very excited to see the turtle. Of course they were sad that it might be dead, but then they jumped for joy when when I promised that we could bury it if it was indeed dead. We left it on the front walk (though not upside down anymore) and went in to eat lunch.

After lunch Rachel ran back out to see the turtle again and ran back in screaming--the turtle was missing! Someone had taken the turtle!

Well--I guess this meant the turtle was alive after all.

I told her to look around in the bushes near the front door, and sure enough, the previously dead turtle had crawled about 8 feet into the bushes.

Now the kids were worried that the turtle was going to starve. But thanks to the magic of the internet we quickly learned that there was a good possibility that the turtle would eat a weed growing in our very own yard. I knew there was a reason for cultivating all those weeds...So the little kids set off around the yard picking weeds to feed the turtle.

At some point Rachel came in with the following information:

"We were going to name the turtle Panpake if it was a boy, and Syrup if it was a girl. But we couldn't tell what it was, so we named it Tortilla. Except Jared calls it Tortil-la."

Pretty soon it was nap time, since last night was Cub Scouts/Achievement Night. Off to bed they trooped, me reassuring Rachel that I was sure nothing would happen to Tortilla while they were asleep.

Of course I was wrong. In that one short hour Tortilla managed to escape from our bushes and left for parts unknown. Rachel was devastated. I just hope that the turtle went towards the woods instead of back to the street!