This is just getting silly.
Drove home from walking a mile around the local community college campus, reached the home row and there, in the middle of the street leading to my driveway, was a familiar shape.
I sighed. I stopped the car. I got out and picked up the box turtle. (Pink eyes, so possibly male, roaming the streets in late spring, so possibly female. Decided it was none of my business either way.) He was less immediately clammy-uppy than past box turtles of my acquaintance, preferring to engage in a little mild flailing and curious head waving.
He did not pee. You cannot know how happy that made me.
Since he was about a hundred feet from the house and headed in that general direction, I took him the rest of the way and let him loose in the wooded edge of the garden. (The sites on box turtles say that they like moist wooded areas with plenty of undergrowth…check.) Last I saw, he had tromped deeper into the woods to a nearby brush pile and was assessing it for hiding places. (The brush pile is perhaps the most overlooked bit of Useful Habitat in all of wildlife gardening…)
Whether he sticks around or is just passin’ through, he can get into the drainage ditches easily and there’s a fair bit of woods in most directions before he encounters another road. Hopefully he (or she) will find what he’s looking for without having to play in traffic again.
On the bright side, turtles I have successfully gotten off the road (3) now outnumber turtles I got to too late (2), which makes me happy.
Originally published at Tea with the Squash God. You can comment here or there.