Reptile & Amphibian Forums

After I said I'm the one who always says I don't take wild animals out of the wild & keep them... lol
We were driving down a busy highway week before last, before we took in Hobo. We came inches from smashing a beautiful box turtle. Six more cars swerved to miss her before we could get her out of the road. After I read a post here recently where someone said they knew about a box turtle who'd been moved over & over by a turtle lover then one day that turtle lover found the turtle smashed on the road, we thought uh oh, we have to pick her up & get her away from this busy highway.
It was dark before we got home, she was in a box asleep so I kept her in the house that night. The next morning I let her go in the yard then we went out of town. Our gate had a gap in it, she could've gotten out but 4 days later when we got home I found that she was still here. That's the day we took in Hobo so we plugged that gap.
Our box turtle houses are still sitting where the old box turtle pen was. Our new pen isn't yet built but this girl has already staked out a house & has been living in it ever since she got here. We thought hey if it's her choice to stay then she can stay. She's one of the prettiest ornates I've seen in a long time.
We've named her Janie or Jane because she came so close to meeting calamity!
Here she is:

Hi Ratz! She is a very pretty girl...however, her shell looks a bit pyramided..perhaps she was a pet not fed propertly? I've never seen a Ornate in person so i dont know if their shells look like that...but i remember charity also had a bit of pyramiding going on... does she seem to be use to people?

I guess it's finally happened, rofl, all the box turtles heard of Ratz and are now migrating to her front door. This boxie just happened to be found before she got there, lol.

Pink LOL!!
Really I don't think she wanted to leave. When we had gaps where they could get out every box turtle we've ever left inside our yard has found the way out within 24 hours. That one who was eating berries got out within an hour or so. I brought her in to compare her to Hope's photos, then I left her inside the fence but by noon she was gone. Janie had that option to leave, in 4 days she didn't take that option so apparently she likes it here. That is why I let her stay, she didn't leave on her own so she can stay if that's what she wants. Now that I know killer dogs are all over the place, I hate to throw her out in this neighborhood.

PHRatz

Lacey,
Hobo has slight pyramiding too & he's quite the wild young man. Charity had nail polish on her so we know for sure she'd been a pet, btw I weighed her yesterday she weighs a pound & a half! She's so huge, but Janie behaves like a totally wild turtle.

I've been noticing in the last couple of years that a lot of wild ones look as if they have a little pyramiding going on & I am beginning to wonder if that's naturally occurring with them in this area due to a lack of water. There's plenty of high protein food for them here but not much water. We had quite a bit of rain last year & we've had some good rain this year but there are some years when we don't see a drop of rain for more than 6 months & so the wild boxes don't get any.
Walkabout Farms has come up with the theory that the lack of water in desert chelonians can contribute to pyramiding soooo, maybe they're right?

PHRatz

And so it doesn't get lost in another thread where I posted this, I'll post this on Janie's thread too. When we found her with cars whizzing by at 55mph & faster, she was right in front of a new housing development where half a million to a million dollar homes are already built & more are being built. They have taken up a lot of land space.
She was near a fire station, a cemetary, a church, & storage facility too. Leaving her on just the other side of the highway didn't seem like a good idea to us. In other instances when we've found box turtles when we were on highways in the middle of no where, we've always stopped & moved box turtle to the side they are headed for. We've never taken any turtles that were truly in the middle of no where & kept them.
All the turtles we've ever put in this yard with the old fence or the new fence have always walked the perimeter of the fencing, found the way out & left. I saw Janie walking the fence line the morning I let her loose in the yard, then we got in the car & left town for 4 days. I was very surprised to see her still here when we got back.
She had all that time to leave yet instead she moved into one of our still standing turtle houses.. so she made me feel as if it really is her choice to be here. I felt like if that's what she wants then she can have what she wants.
If I find her trying to get out at some point, I'll take her away & let her go. Lacey mentioned that perhaps at some point she was somebody's pet, so now I wonder since she wouldn't leave when she very well could have, maybe Lacey is right? Maybe she seems more wild to me because she fears me & that is because she doesn't know me. She doesn't mind me handing her food to eat though. hmmmmmmm

PHRatz

That would be my approximate guess, as well as possibly relative humidity. Pyramiding is quite common in ornates.

Mick
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"When tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign foe."

James Madison

Ratz, was her shell that clean when you found her? I mean Hobos shell is quite dirty. I've found 2 wild eastern boxies and they were prety dirty. What wild turtle has a shell that clean (unless they scrub there shell when they take a dip in a lake or pond)? I guess it is possible that she is a wild turtle...

Lacey,
Yes Janie's shell was the clean when I found her. It being so clean compared to Hobo being so dirty, I hadn't thought about that. It hadn't been raining & there wasn't any standing water source where she was found, hmmmmmmmm.

PHRatz