Chalk this one to the just plain bizarre. I was mowing the lawn in the backyard today and I came across a turtle. Now I suppose that there are some places in the world where that would seem pretty normal, but my backyard is not one of them. I looked around and could not figure out where this turtle may have come from. No one in the neighborhood has mentioned anything about missing a turtle, so I was very puzzled has to exactly how this turtle got here.
After I showed the turtle to Sarah and Alice we left it alone to hide. It moved forward a bit, but seemed happy enough to hide in some of the taller grass. So I finished mowing the lawn and started pulling weeds around the corner. After doing that for awhile I went to go check on the turtle. He (how do you determine the gender of a turtle?) was gone! I looked up and and down the yard, nothing. The only thing more puzzling than how he got there in the first place was how he disappeared from the yard later on.
I’ll confess to not knowing a lot about turtles (other than they don’t walk very fast), so at this point I started to look for more creative ways that this turtle could have made his escape. Do turtles dig tunnels by any chance? Although I didn’t see any signs of a turtle tunnel in the area of the yard that he was in, that seemed like a reasonable possibility. Is there a secret network of turtle tunnels under my house?
I’m going to be extra careful when walking around the yard, would want to step on the poor guy if he decides to show up again.