Turtle Time

She was ten feet away from Fred’s fenceline when I saw her coming towards me—head up, short legs sweeping the grass—and she lifted me from a fog of chores and headlines.

I try not to get too worked up over what’s happening outside my neighborhood, but it’s hard to ignore the cruelty and corruption in Washington and the wars in Israel and Ukraine.

So I distract myself with what Bob calls “World Class Puttering.” Here he is yesterday on the business end of a shovel, digging a deep hole for a Fringe Tree from Rachel’s Native Plants. I took that photo before hanging our bed sheets on the line, after which I dug all the mondo grass from our pond garden.

When our chores turn onerous, we seek diversions from the natural world. It’s an especially good day when the box turtles return for the summer.

Her legs are dotted with yellow scales against a rusty background and when I caught up to her, I took note of the rainy cascade on her pleural scutes—six little clouds and a burst of rain on the scute in the middle of her right side.

Okay, here’s some turtle vocabulary:
Carapace: the top shell
Plastron: the bottom shell
Scutes: shell sections or scales
Vertebral Scutes: scales along the topline of the carapace
Plueral Scutes: scales along the side

Based on that pattern, I named her Rain and began looking for pictures from other years. The first time we saw her was in 2022, determined to cross through the chicken wire into our garden.

We learned how to tell Rain’s sex from the internet. Females have flat plastrons, and males have a little hollow in theirs. That slightly conclave shell helps him stay aboard when mating. Nature thinks of everything!

Rain isn’t huge, but our neighbor David Harris, an avid turtler, guesses she may be upwards of forty years old. He writes about his turtles at A Turtle For Every Log.

Other turtles have visited Trouts Farm over the years, and we usually catch them in our camera lens. In 2020, I photographed two turtles that I have not seen since. I gave them names so that I can recognize them if they return.

Comet’s pattern is similar to Rain’s, with more of a starburst vibe. We didn’t turn them over to look for a divot.

Zip has a disturbing lip line. It looks like someone sewed their lips shut. Both Comet and Zip have a bright dotted line along their topline.

2023 was a big year. Another dotted-line turtle showed up on July 1st.

I named it Tiger because its shell is so colorful.

And then we spotted a third turtle towards the end of July who clearly had business with Rain. I named him Leopard for his bold pattern, and because he was less stripy than Tiger.

I hope to see more turtles and plan on looking at their undersides. I used to worry about scaring them off with too much handling, but Rain keeps coming back, so I’m going for it.

We easily lose ourselves in outdoor work, surrounded by birdcalls and the scent of the tea roses, the sweet William, and now the Fringe Tree. I sometimes make it until noon without a glance at my newsletters, which makes for a healthy, sane life.

After I finish this post, I plan on pruning our azaleas and cleaning out the rain barrel. And when I see Rain moving around our yard, I’ll take a nature break to watch and wonder what she’s thinking or about to do next.