HeadStart

My days have been filled with company and volunteer work and a few meetings. While I know that being active is very important in retirement, I am looking forward to some downtime before my 22-day trip that is also filled with stuff!

This post should go on my other blog, but I just posted something seasonal there, so I will write about it here.

Reptiles lay eggs in many different areas of the wild.   I have seen them move the gravel from the side of a busy road to lay their eggs.  I have come across them laying eggs at the edge of a hiking path in the forest.  This year one of our box turtles decided that the compost pile would be perfect with its summer warmth. The eggs usually hatch in late August and early September. Hubby was flipping that good earthy compost a few weeks ago when he found this

He is a scientist after all and realized he had torn an egg and induced an egg hatching before its time! Thus a section of my kitchen was immediately converted into a hatchery for one lone box turtle. He avoided turning the rest of the pile for another two weeks!

He brought in the aquarium and filled it with some of the compost.  I got a timed light to replicate the sun.  We added a small dish of water to keep the aquarium moist.

We had some watermelon and put a little of that in the aquarium/terrarium while waiting for the turtle to hatch.  Days went by, but we could see slight movement if we touched the egg, so we knew it was still viable (alive).  Finally, just before the visit of the first grandson, the little guy/gal shoved its way out of the eggshell and crawled to the watermelon and ate!

Hubby cut up a worm or two a day later, and turtle also liked that.  I was told by a friend that they liked grubs but never seemed to find those in our dry soils after weeks of little rain.  We also added pawpaws which are ripening in our woods now, and that was a favorite.  He still had his little egg tooth!

He did well for the weeks that we kept him, and it was hard to let him go out into the world of snakes, fox and whatever else might want to eat him.  We put him back near the compost with a little food, and maybe next spring he will return!  We will not recognize him and I doubt he will recognize us.