It was bittersweet...

[Yvonne G]

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.

 

[wellington]

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

 

[yagyujubei]

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

 

[DesertGrandma]

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!

 

[Carol S]

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.