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COLUMBUS DISPATCH (Ohio) 05 May 06 Plucky turtle a concrete stowaway - Reptile ends up in newly poured floor (Dean Narciso)
Photo at URL below : The turtle rescued by a construction worker can move its arms and tail, but its mouth is still closed and its eyes are shut. (Tim Revell)
Had the worker not seen the quivering lump, a slow death would have been certain.
The worker, using a heavy trowel machine to smooth the newly poured concrete floor, saw the 2-inch-long turtle just before noon Wednesday as it struggled to escape entombment.
"Somehow he survived the trip over from the plant and from the pump up to the fifth floor and then the finishing machines that drove over it," said Jeff Ruschau, project manager at Messer Construction, the general contractor on the new Nationwide building going up at Marconi and Nationwide boulevards.
"It’s not uncommon," said Art Marchi, vice president of sales at Anderson Concrete on Frank Road.
"You’re in the lakes next to our stockpiles and turtles will crawl out and (sun)bathe themselves on a pile and may fall asleep or something," said Marchi, a 30-year veteran of the concrete business.
Being scooped, dropped and mashed in a violent soup of gravel, sand and concrete was only the beginning for the armored reptile.
The turtle also survived the churning trip inside the concrete truck. And at the job site, the lumpy mixture was pumped up a tube and dumped out. The entire odyssey would have lasted more than four hours.
"It was quite a journey," Marchi said.
Then it survived the trowel machine, which uses rotating blades and its quarter-ton weight to smooth nearly cured concrete.
"The guy thought it was a piece of wire mesh until it started moving," said Marchi, who recalled finding turtles and even a snake on jobs. "It’s not unusual to get critters."
The trowel-machine operator, an employee for Cincinnati-based Jostin Concrete, could not be reached for comment.
Messer’s Ruschau called Anderson with a cryptic message that Marchi figured out only yesterday: "I’ve got something that belongs to you."
Most turtles native to Columbus are water and box turtles and are equipped to withstand some trauma, said Don Winstel, Columbus Zoo assistant director of conservation and education. A turtle can retract its head and limbs for protection, and it hibernates during the winter.
"It probably is a reflection of them being able to bury in the mud so well and not have to come up for air," Winstel said. "Its metabolism may not have been requiring a lot of oxygen."
His concern is "what all it consumed and took in through the eyes and nose."
Still, he said "It’s amazing to think of it going through all that and still fighting its way to the surface."
Yesterday, the recuperating turtle appeared to be in good condition at Messer’s office at the job site.
Plucky turtle a concrete stowaway

COLUMBUS DISPATCH (Ohio) 11 May 06 New digs for a well-traveled turtle - Rescued reptile finds refuge at Westerville school (Dean Narciso)
Plucky the turtle, rescued from a concrete tomb, found more comfortable surroundings in Kelly Hoffman’s special-needs class at Westerville Central High School yesterday.
However, it was a bit of an unceremonious welcome.
With all seven students watching, Nick, the classroom’s resident turtle who is five times larger than his new roommate, floated over to Plucky and lunged at his tail.
Hoffman plunged her arm into the water-filled tank and pulled the two apart.
"He thinks he’s food," Chris Marlowe said as his classmates drew closer.
"It could be his way of saying ‘Hello,’ " Chris offered, giving Nick the benefit of the doubt.
Last Thursday, Plucky survived a four-hour ordeal: driven in a churning truck from a South Side concrete plant, sucked up a five-story tube at a Marconi Boulevard job site and smoothed over by a half-ton troweling machine.
The machine’s operator, Alex Johnson, was inspecting the floor he supposedly had just smoothed when he found the lump that turned out to be a turtle.
"I stuck it in a bucket of water and it started swimming," said Johnson, who works for Cincinnati-based Jostin Concrete. "I was pretty impressed. I thought it deserved to live."
Plucky was moved to a small fishbowl on an office desk at Messer Construction, the general contractor on the building. At first, the turtle didn’t open its mouth or eyes.
"We would’ve kept him as the office mascot," said Steve Welker, a project engineer, who toyed with the name "Clumpy," a nod to his concrete origins. "Every day he’s gotten more and more active."
But Messer received numerous adoption requests from schools and veterinarians. Hoffman’s was the most compelling.
A year ago, her dog spit out another resilient turtle in her back yard. That was Nick.
She always thought that Nick should have a roommate in his 100-gallon home.
So Plucky, his name taken from a Dispatch headline, moved in with Nick yesterday.
Hoffman later was looking for a screen to keep the two separate.
Despite the rude welcome, she was pleased at the turtle’s message: "This kind of says ‘If a little turtle can survive, anybody can.’ What a great survival story."
It might have helped that Plucky is a Midland Painted turtle, a species common to Ohio that burrows in the mud during the winter and requires little oxygen, according to the state Department of Natural Resources.
New digs for a well-traveled turtle