Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Just got this little guy.

Here's a new shot of one of the hatchlings.

Nice looking guy!
He looks like he's had some rough times going by the shell damage.

Best of luck with him!

Bill Tracy
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My Turtle Stuff
My Box Turtle Site

Yes, he does have a lot of damage. You can't even see most of it in this picture. He also has a split scute on his back. I've noticed that every turtle found in my area has a lot of fungal type damage to the edges of their shells. The edges will have a chewed, nothing but bone look to them. I don't know if they are getting some kind of fungus or something else, and b/c we don't see many live(mostly just find the damaged shells, have only found 4 live boxies in the past 6 years and 3 were found this year.)it is hard to study them. I have pictures of the 2 females I found as well as more of him if you would like to see more of the damage. Sorry post is so long.

Is there a reason you are taking these specimens out of the wild? I commend your studies, but aren't you afraid that you will impact the local population?

Not trying to judge: perhaps your area is one of the few still teeming with eastern box turtles!

I don't keep them. They stay with me for at the very most one week, and thats only if they are severly underweight or have open wounds. I usually snap a couple of pics and send them back to where they came from within just a few minutes. It may have sounded like I was keeping them, and I'm sorry if it did, but I don't keep them.

That's a great service you are doing. I'm sure that the individuals you treat with first aid benefit the entire local population tenfold, even if they only live for a few more years.

I've always wanted to do a similar thing myself, but the area in which I live is quite devoid of box turtles. I live in Corning, NY, in the Southern Tier of the state, and I have never in my 23 years seen a single box turtle! It is unclear why upstate NY is lacking in box turtles, since about 90% of the state is extremely rural. I have heard from many that the great Iroquios tribes that lived around the Finger Lakes used box turtle shells in their religious burials, and that their 500 years of flourishment killed off the native turtle populations. I'm sure it would be hard to rebound in this region, since it is as cold as hell a lot of the year.