I rescued a female Ornate Box Turtle a little over a week ago from a country road next to a crop field. At first, I just stopped to move her off the road, but then I saw a huge gouge in her shell packed full of mud and seeds, and she was really ill-tempered, so I took her home to investigate the injury. I soaked the mud out of the wound, and it is literally the worst gash I've seen in a living turtle. It is a good 3/4 inch across, and about 3 1/2 inches long, placed vertically just to the right side of her spine. The injury is almost 1/2 inch deep consistently, and it destroyed all the bony layers of her shell. A fraction of an inch deeper, and it would have opened into the body cavity. I don't want to release her back into the wild right now, because even the slightest trauma would split the wound open entirely, so I set her up in a very nice home, am keeping her warm, and she has settled in so quickly it's amazing! The first day, I fed her nightcrawlers which she devoured. Each day after that, I have been giving her berries on a plate, and her favorite food is crickets....which she takes off of my feeding tweezers with no hesitation! In fact, she comes literally running when she sees me holding the tongs, and she can also race around and catch crickets by herself for some good exercise. She spends a good portion of her daytime soaking in her warm water dish, relaxing, and her temperament has improved since I cleaned the wound of debris. Now, I am keeping it filled with antibiotic cream, and cleaning the wound/replacing the cream every two days. She really gets relaxed when I replace the cream, it must feel soothing! I see improvement in the condition of the wound already, and her overall health now seems excellent. She is a great turtle!

Since she came from the freshly tilled field, and because of the nature of the wound, I think she was injured by some sort of farm machinery. Luckily, she is not otherwise injured, but I am going to keep her until her shell wound gets a lot stronger, it just feels too risky to release her right now. Has anyone else seen an injury like this? Do they tend to heal well? I've been rescuing/keeping/releasing box turtles locally for quite awhile now, but I've never seen an injury like this before, so any advice/input would be appreciated. I will post a picture as soon as possible. Thanks in advance!

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