Moni

That had to be an fantastic event to witness!
I agree about turtles and personalities...my ex and I (in Tucson) used to have about 50 box turtles of all ages and tempraments in his back yard...the oldest male whose arrival on the scene would have the females scattering and the younger males frozen in their tracks (Named "Big Red" for his red eyes) and the little female who got excited and looked like she was actually smiling when I laid a rock path from the yard to the porch (it had previously been just good sized rocks filling up a portion of his yard off that side of the porch and turtles were constantly getting caught in them)...I laid the path, setting the rocks into the ground and making it smooth and that one female just loved it...she looked like she had just been thrown a surprise party LOL. She and several other females more than likely still use the path as a way onto and around the porch. [img]smile.gif[/img]
Then I built them a house of rocks out under his orange tree and against the side of his shed....I dug it deep and huge with a gentle slanting floor coming back up to an open framed-rock doorway tall enough for even Big Red...they were crawling around, in, and out of it before I could even finish and it turned into a haven of some sort for the "no longer young but not yet old" crowd...at least 15 a day congregated there.

I forget how to tell the males from the females though so I don't know what the one I have is, other than it was pissed off at me and looked quite sad when I put it in its new place...I am going to look for it tomorrow and see if it is any happier (if it was that far away from its home lookingfor food it had to be). If it still appears distressed, I'm not sure what I'll do because it would have to have come quite a way to get where it was from any natural habitat it had and I have to wonder why it went so far.

I do know turtles are social animals...we brought a pair home from the woods when I was a kid, one at a time about a week apart from each other and they were thrilled to be reunited...you could see the recognition as they raced to be together and they stayed together at all times in their large pen, house, and pool that we built them. A kid from the neighborhood (for no apparent reason) decided he'd throw a rock at one of them one day a few years later and hit its shell in the perfect spot on its spine to crack the shell and kill it almost instantly...the other turtle was right there to see it happen and refused to eat afterwards, eventually starving to death.

I don't want my new turtle to be sad and I have been feeling terrible thinking I could have taken it away from a mate but why was it so far away from any natural habitat? I'll probably take it to the wildlife refuge near here if it doesn't like it here...or should I take it back to the same general area that I found it in, just off in the other direction where there are eventually natural places for it to live?

Thank you very much for the link! it probably is a mud turtle of some sort...I was able to find a picture of a Sonoran Mud Turtle and the shell is likt that but it is less muddy and shows color...its skin is colorful too....brilliant reds and browns and it has light eyes.