SHOPLIFTING IN PROGRESS

I have a pet feral turtle that lives in the thick palmetto and water oak scrub adjacent to my house. We go back to 1994 or so. For the last 7 years the box turtle visits every spring to eat dry cat food from the outdoor cat food bowl.

Forgive me if I have shared this before but the cute shoplifter provokes a repeat.

In death lie the seeds of a better world for those who mourn.
For out of what we lose, a new life is born.
Despite when a page from the book of life is torn.

Here follows a story written one year ago to explain the uncommon joy I felt at the discovery of a new baby turtle as I whacked the weeds creeping from the overgrown vacant lot next door.
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Bay Street Wildlife – Bay Street Swamp – Moar Never Ending Story – Grand Daddy Moria – A Death In The Family – “Talking To Ourselves”

More than two decades ago I came home to an empty house. Recently divorced again, and my two kids across town with their mother, no one was there to greet me. I stepped out on my deck facing Santa Rosa Sound, the view from my elevated house on pilings. There I found an injured box turtle. Something had chewed at his left rear leg opening, leaving a jagged edge still protecting the barely visible hind foot and leg. The head, tail and other three legs were unmolested.

I was puzzled how the turtle had managed to be up to the top of the treated-wood stairs leading to the the deck area. I imagined a raccoon had carried it up the stairs to try to have a meal of it. Perhaps I had frightened off the raccoon when I came home. The house at the time was one of the first on Bay Street. A cedar plywood exterior, a mere box on now creosote pilings, now outlawed since the Wetlands Protection Act of 1980. There were 7 or 8 woodpecker nest holes in the exterior cedar siding, home to nesting birds. Bay Street was sparsely settled, especially the area across the street, the Bay Street Swamp; now bordered on the south by a brick wall – erected after Hurricane Ivan and before the 2008 crash.

I took in the injured turtle and gave it water, salad food and fruit. After 12 hours it finally came out of its shell and began to move around. I kept it for two days and released it in my yard. The following decade or two when I was there I would see turtles on occasion. Two different individuals hung out in my yard and in my neighbor’s. Lots of grass and manicured bushes grew nicely as opposed to the former scrub habitat of these indigenous box turtles. That habitat is disappearing. I watched the turtles eat the verdant St. Augustine grass. They liked the neighbor’s highly landscaped vegetation. I once saw one eat a fiddler crab that had wandered from the shoreline up under my home. I would expect they eat palmetto bugs and wood roaches too when they can. They love the prickly pear cactus fruit from my yard and most likely thrive on palmetto berries.

In 2008 I retired from a professional life and set to restore my Hurricane Ivan damaged home. It had been a gHetto house, since September 2004. And it still was in 2008. With the help of friends and family three years later that project was over. And since 2008 I would guess more than thirty houses have been built plus a 20 unit rebuilt condo on my little street.

Since I retired my life has slowed down considerably. I spend most of my days at home. So I find more time to see the slow daily events of life.

For the last 7 years or so I have seen one turtle every summer. I have photographed him/her and posted it on my FB page. It has a damaged left rear shell. So I began to wonder could it be the same turtle “rescued” from my deck circa 1994? I strongly suspected it was and is. It has doubled in size over the decades. My reading about box turtles tells me box turtles have a range and home territory they defend and stay in. It is said if they are removed from their territory they will wander forever and forever wonder, trying to return. A very sad thought when I consider all the box turtles I have picked up and taken long distances away.

I also have two outdoor cats and a 9 pound terrier type dog. One kitty is from a feral litter and was dropped off by the mother who prowled Bay Street with her 4 kittens. The other once belonged to my neighbors, two vacant lots over. Their cat came to stay with me after their house burned -a total loss – and now rebuilt, and the good neighbors live there again. Dash, a black and white panda cat still calls my house his home.

So I feed the cats every morning. I put away the bowls at night as the opossums, raccoons, skunks, foxes, rats (cotton mice), beach mice, cockroaches and coyotes will be attracted and eat any left out. The bears only empty my trash canisters occasionally and I do not want to give the bears reason to come under my house. My perennially returning damaged turtle has learned to tip over the stainless cat food bowl filled with dry cat food and help himself. I do not see it during the cold months but every summer it returns for more cat food deli delights. I have discovered burrows in thick bushes which I suspect the turtle hibernates in.

Last year I epoxied a metal dog tag on my returning visitor, identifying where it’s home territory is. I read box turtles can live 40-50 years and some reach 100 years old. My son and I have photographed and seen a dozen or so box turtles on Bay Street. I have seen maybe 3 or 4 individuals in my yard and 4 more somewhere else on Bay Street. THEY ALL have damage to their shells, from raccoons most likely. One is missing a rear leg. [The baby box turtle would be a mere snack for a raccoon]

So it is with some sadness I tell the story of Grand Daddy box turtle. On Thursday, 12 July 2018 my son was walking on the walkway to the dock. At the edge of the retaining wall he saw a turtle and motioned to me. My son now lives in the total remade gHetto house with his wife and 6 and 3 year old children. I now stay above the detached garage. I walked down to the water’s edge where my son stood and there was a motionless box turtle. It was surrounded and semi embedded in a heavy collection of eelgrass, aka called turtle grass by many. There was an abundance of fresh marine grass as is always the case after a day of many boats on the intercostal, propellers cutting the grasses that grow in shallow water. That day there were only a few hundred boats out watching the Blue Angels practice above Pensacola Beach. But enough detached grass created to form a soft bed for the immobile turtle to lie undisturbed. No tracks were there to indicate which direction along the beach it had come from. Travis stepped down from the sea wall and picked up the turtle. It had a bad case of shell rot; a condition to cause loss of the shiny part of the carapace. leaving a whitish bone like surface. AND it was very obvious this was a very big specimen of a box turtle. Both of us were impressed. It was alive but not very active. We knew it was very old and most likely on it’s last legs. We rinsed off the muck of the sea grass and put it in a big box with dry cat food, water and fruit. Overnight it moved about in the box, making a mess of everything.

As you can tell, I am a bit of a sentimental old man. I thought about the plight of box turtles. They are listed as “vulnerable”

Box turtles are not considered threatened or endangered nationally, although some states list them as a species of special concern. Eastern box turtles are scarce in parts of their range because of habitat loss, collisions with cars, and over-collection.

I have seen two different car caused turtle fatalities in sight of my house. A box turtle and a large water turtle, both hit crossing the blacktop of Bay Street. The 25 mph speed limit deters few from barreling along, texting or talking on their phone, way over the speed limit.. (a different rant)

In the last two years, four lots have been cleared along the seashore close to my house. Heavily cleared of old growth pine, palmettos and oak trees to make way for better views and nice open yards. I imagine la vieja tortuga had lived among the 4 now cleared lots for over 50 years and escaped the invasion of dogs, fenced yards and people by becoming a beach walker, making his way along the beach to find me and die a good death.

After seeing signs and sighs of life Thursday night I read more about box turtles. Shell rot is treatable and online advice suggested veterinary care for the worst cases. So it was I took Grand Daddy turtle to the vet. The animal lovers’ staff were kind and caring. And they made me an appointment to speak with the doctor a few hours later in the day. He was compassionate and realistic about helping the geriatric Leonardo ninja. Undaunted by the restraint of my budget I wanted him to do what he could. Hydration and antibiotics injected into cavities and advice was given to use a povidone-iodine solution on the shell surface. Plus he showed me how to force feed wet cat food and deliver antibiotic suspension and water with a plastic syringe.

That night the turtle crawled around my tiled living room floor. The next day I force fed it and gave the dose of antibiotics and placed it outside under the shade of an oak tree, next to a mature palmetto bush. I made a pen out of a section of wooden garden fencing from Lowes. The turtle had much attention on Saturday. We had over 30 guests at the house to watch the Blue Angel show, half of them little people, some whom had never seen a box turtle. They all wanted to hold the turtle but rest was the order of the day for the senior patient. Grand Daddy moved around all day, spilling the shallow water pan several times. Odd to me is when my 6 year old grandson asked me if the turtle ever sneezed; as we groomed the turtle prior to placing it in the outdoor enclosure.

And then I thought about Moria… and The Never Ending Story. Little Grant has probably seen the movie, a favorite of my two sons when they were young. It still ranks up there with me. I have watched it several times in the last decade. Moria is the gargantuan turtle: The Ancient One in the Swamps of Sadness who directs Atreyu to The Southern Oracle. And Moria sneezes many times in the face of our hero of the movie. Do you know why Moria was sneezing?

The answer is here:

Grand Daddy passed quietly in the middle of the night next to the bushy palmetto, Saturday-Sunday. We placed him in a cardboard box for burial. I took shell measurements to record the large size of the wizened old wizard. I like to think he was trying to return to the place of his birth near the Dead Man’s Marsh that drains the Bay Street Swamp. Sad to say his progress was stopped by my retaining wall along the shoreline.

The story of the dead man I discovered, and the eponym for what I call Dead Man’s Marsh, is about a dead man who washed up on the shore. He pointed to the place to plant a few rhizomes of marsh grass and is another chapter in the disturbed wetlands that I call the Bay Street Swamp.

The marsh has grown considerably over the decades, now the only natural seashore marsh for miles either way. Orioles and red winged blackbirds feed on the snails living on the marsh grass stalks, not to mention the many juvenile fish, crabs and littoral birds that inhabit it also. I imagine when Oriole Beach was named there were miles and miles of shoreline marsh grass and orioles would have been abundant. The little marsh continues to grow and attracts myriads of birds and aquatic creatures to complement the wildlife of the Bay Street Swamp.

And to complete this tome of turtle lore I include this video. While stationed in Turkey in 1975 I had an experience with a turtle I have told before, a year or two ago, on this site. I was picnicking with the most beautiful blond on the base with an Airman two striper married to the most beautiful brunette on the base. He had something like 16 years in grade. He worked in the base commander’s office. He ran marathons. You do the math.

We traveled half a day to a remote destination on the Sea of Marmara and climbed a 100 foot high hill of rocks and boulders to enjoy the view and eat our lunch. Where we had a spooky encounter with a turtle atop the hill. How turtle had managed to climb the hill was a mystery.

A decade or so ago I met a Turkish animator at a beach bar and told him of the story. He then produced this video that encapsulates a mythic turtle based on my story.

I would let the shell boy off with a stern warning, a bowl of water and fresh veggies.