Turtle Time

It's that time of year again. Huston, Lillie and I were on our way home from picking Huston up from preschool and we found a turtle on the road near our house. It was a water turtle this time, not the usual box turtle we have found in past years. I am a fan of the turtle, so I turned around and scooped this one up and brought him home for the boys to look at for awhile.


The boys enjoyed playing with "him" - (who knows what it really was!) - and gave it strawberries, pulled it along in their wagon and sprayed the grass with water so it would have a nice wet place to hang out in for a bit.

After Avery woke up from his nap he also went out to play with the turtle, and that's when we determined it would be best to go ahead and take the turtle back to the creek a little sooner than planned. That boy knows no fear with animals - he picked that turtle right up, shook it around, patted it on the back rather harshly - no matter how many times you told him to be gentle and over all just smothered it with his presence. Last year when we found a box turtle in the yard Avery, even at the age of 18 mos, would take the poor turtle and spin him on the patio - needless to say he was not allowed to touch the turtle without a bit of supervision!


So we said bye to "Watery" as Huston had named him (what can I say, my boys have quite the creativity for naming things :-) and drove him back down the road to the creek. Isaiah cried and managed a good bye in between sobs...guess we'll have to look into some kind of pet for him - he wants so badly to take care of something.

(The right picture shows the turtle in the bottom corner of the frame and his happy creek home at the top of the picture among the bushes...)













It was fun to have Watery with us, even if it was for only a couple of hours - we enjoyed noticing the differences between the two kinds of turtles...in the end I think I prefer the box turtle myself.