2005-03-14: I Collect Unusual, Large Items

When I was about to leave for work, I got an unusual call from Craig. The conversation went, roughly, "Do you want a turtle?" "A what?" "A turtle. Do you want a big turtle?" "Uh... how did this question come about?" "He was wandering around in front of my house, and my dad doesn't want him around. Do you want him?" "Eh, sure."

And so, the adventure of the turtle began. I told my manager I'd be a bit late coming back from lunch, and Craig drove by in short order with the turtle in a box. Which is somewhat amusing, considering that he's a box turtle. The precise species isn't at 100% confidence, though. I took him in and put him in an open-lidded glass terrarium, which he can't climb the walls of. When he came in, I thought he was coated in mud. When I gave him a tub bath, I found that while he wasn't exactly clean, he was also actually brown on a good number of his shell plates. Not a natural brown, but more of a "the pattern has been sanded off, now here's what the plates look like underneath" brown. He's also got a number of deep gouges which were filled in with mud, plus a few chunks of his shell missing. I suspect that he may have had a run-in or two with a lawnmower in his earlier years. I also haven't seen a box turtle that big before, and I really doubt he grew as big as he did by wandering the roads in San Diego. In short, I suspect from his condition that this guy is the escaped pet of someone who probably didn't have any business keeping a turtle in the first place.

If it weren't for the road traffic, I wouldn't mind turning him loose in my mobile home park. Heaven knows we've got enough snails to support a large population of box turtles, but he'd get himself run over in short order, and it's probably too dry in the summer.