Yesterday evening I turned on the sprinklers in the box turtle pens and told myself that I WOULD remember to turn them off. Well, you know how that goes, don't you? I went in, took my shower and parked in front of the TV.

This a.m. I went out to do my morning chores and there was this flood!! So after I fed and cleaned up after the horse, I got a little bowl and started to inspect the pens. Nothing in the Eastern pen, nothing in the 3-toe, nothing in the luteola and nothing in the ornate pen...but! Look what I found in the gulf coast pen:

The nest -

There was one turtle at the top of the hole and two eggs at the bottom.

around the pen -





and the total -


The bitter part of the story is that the two babies in the eggs were no where ready to hatch, and they either died a while ago, or they drowned last night.

Ya for the little babies, sorry about the other two.

Look at it this way. If you hadn't flooded the joint, you might never have found any.

They blend in with the dirt so well I don't know how you ever found them. I can hardly see them in the photos. Congrats on the new little ones!

Sorry about the two eggs. How exciting about all the little hatchlings!

I always forget to turn the sprinkler off so I bought a timer that attaches to the faucet and you turn the dial to set the amount of time that you want to water and the hose shuts off by itself. I bought it at Lowe's for around $14.00. A great little invention.