The box turtle; ancient, gentle woodland native
No matter what your primary objective outdoors, there is always some bonus to enjoy. In early May, common objectives are a big, glossy turkey gobbler, a creel of silvery trout or a bag of morels.
While I鈥檝e sought all these prizes, one bonus I always welcome is encountering a box turtle. Finding a box turtle going about its plodding and mostly solitary way is an invitation to admire an ancient and gentle form of life, well adapted to our woodlands.
Eastern box turtles are unique among the turtle clan. Their name implies their main distinction. The bottom shell, also known as the plastron, is hinged in front and back. This enables the box turtle, when alarmed, to draw in its head, legs and tail then tightly seal itself inside. Even determined predators like coyotes cannot force open the hinge. No other turtle has this advantage.
The box turtle蘑菇视频 upper shell 鈥� called the carapace 鈥� also sets it apart. It蘑菇视频 marked with bright orange, red or yellow bars, dots and arcs. No other turtle in this region lives inside such an ornate carapace.
And while all other turtles depend on ponds or other watery habitats, the box turtle is our only true land turtle. It will seek damp soils in the heat of dry summers, but it doesn鈥檛 need standing water. The box turtle is a creature of upland forest where it feeds daintily slugs, snails, fungus, fruits such as wild strawberries, and sometimes the decaying carcasses of other animals.
Young box turtles are seldom 鈥� almost never 鈥� seen but the adults range in length from four to seven inches, measured from the front to rear of the shell. Males almost always have red eyes. Females鈥� eyes are brown.
It was common to encounter box turtles when my grandfather took me into the woods as boy to look for morels and pokeweed. We would often find several in a foraging session in the Greene County hills. We never painted them, carved their shells or marked them in any way, as was once a common practice. But if we had, we would have learned that we鈥檇 met the same turtles repeatedly. That蘑菇视频 because box turtles have a strong bond to a specific place and it is rare for an individual to roam more than a few hundred yards from the place of its hatching.
Females do tend to travel more than males in early summer when they seek out places to dig a shallow nest in the soil with their rear legs, deposit three to five eggs inside, backfill the hole then leave the nest, hoping for the best.
Box turtles can live to 80 years of age. One researcher in Maryland in the 1940s subtly marked the box turtles she observed. She returned to the site 30 years later and found many of the same turtles using the same patches of woods.
Occasionally, I still have the good fortune to find a box turtle in the woods but not as often as when we combed the slopes for morels in the 1960s.
This turtle蘑菇视频 low reproductive rate and its small home range make it vulnerable to all kinds of modern mortality. Roads are their greatest danger. When a box turtle decides to cross a road, it takes a long time 鈥� too long in many cases. And the more roads, pipelines and other disturbances carve up a landscape, the more likely that turtles wander into harm蘑菇视频 way. As they become isolated, finding a mate becomes difficult and dangerous. When I see a box turtle on the road, if I can safely pull over I move it to safety on the side toward which it was traveling.
Another threat to box turtles is the continued desire of people to take them home as pets. Today every individual is needed to maintain a future population. The Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission, which manages and protects reptiles in the state, now prohibits the possession of box turtles. You may not keep even one, no matter how 鈥渃ute.鈥� Always leave box turtles where you find them unless you must move one out of danger to a safer location nearby.
As this column advised at the beginning, nature has a way of springing surprises. Two or three summers ago, I saw 13 different box turtles on roads and trails across Fayette and Greene counties over a span of about two weeks. Does that suggest that box turtles may be more common than we suspect, or was it sheer randomness? Either way, it was a welcome reacquaintance.
Ben Moyer is a member of the Pennsylvania Outdoor Writers Association and the Outdoor Writers Association of America