Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hi guys,
My name is Jason and I live in New Jersey. Today while returning from work, I came accross an injured female North American Wood turtle. She must have been hit by a car and the back left part of her shell is bleeding pretty bad. I really only have experience with tortoises so this is kind of new for me....can someone please help me? Do not tell me to just release the poor thing because she clearly will not make it. I want to help her out as best as I can before I release her...I have only come across these wood turtles twice in the last 3 years so they must not be very common around here.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
-J-

>>Hi guys,
>>My name is Jason and I live in New Jersey. Today while returning from work, I came accross an injured female North American Wood turtle. She must have been hit by a car and the back left part of her shell is bleeding pretty bad. I really only have experience with tortoises so this is kind of new for me....can someone please help me? Do not tell me to just release the poor thing because she clearly will not make it. I want to help her out as best as I can before I release her...I have only come across these wood turtles twice in the last 3 years so they must not be very common around here.
>>
>>Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
>>-J-

Hi Jason,
My vet takes in hit by car turtles so I'm very aware of how extremely lucky I am that I have a place to take one like this at no cost to me.
I'm going to assume that you don't know a vet who would take this one in right this second.
My first thought then would be if you cannot find a vet to help you then can you find a wildlife rehabber? In my city Animal Services (the dog pound) knows who all the local rehabbers are & if I were to call them they could tell me who to contact.
If they couldn't point me in the right direction the local game warden could do that.
Do you have a local herp society? They'd surely be able to help you locate someone to help this turtle.
I'm thinking if you could just find the right agency or group to call, you'd be able to find help for this poor injured turtle.
Good luck & please let us know how things go!
-----
PHRatz

Thanks for the help! I will contact local reptile vets on Monday, I am unsure if there are any around here though....

I was hoping there would be some kind of wildlife rehabilitator in my area who could lend a hand. I need to reach out to someone who knows about these turtles, preferably locally.

Say a prayer!
-J-

Hi, Jason:

I would be happy to help you with the injured wood turtle. I am a wildlife rehabilitator and I specialize in turtles. Please contact me.

Best regards,
Harriet Forrester
Turtle Rescue of New Jersey
New Jersey State Licensed Wildlife Rehabilitator

Thank you all so much for your responses. It's great to see that there are still some poeple around that have a heart for wildlife!

Well as it turns out I met up with a gentleman by the name Chris Leonie. He took a look at the turtle and what I thought was a bad wound ended up just being a minor abrasion to the shell. Chris cleaned out the scrape, sterilized it and then made sure it still had an appetite. Boy can those things eat! We fed it just a few worms to make sure but did not want to overload it since he said hibernation is just around the corner. He then told me to take it back to where I found it but make sure it's far enough from the road. I went back to the spot, drove about a quarter of a mile north and walked into the woods as far as I could. There was a stream there and I put the turtle in the water. It hesitated at first but then sawm away. It came up on the other side of the stream and started walking deeper into the woods so it seemed as though it was going in the opposite direction of the road. I literally watched this thing for about 40 minutes! I hope that liitle gal will be ok and won't try to cross any roads anytime soon!

Again thank you everyone for your help I will keep you all in mind just in case this happens again!
-J-

Ken,
Thanks for the e-mail regarding the replies to this post!
Yes the turtle was not severely injurred so I cleaned her up and had Jason let her go. She was quite a beauty! Very alert and other than the scrape on her shell, she was perfect in every way. I actually didn't believe it was a woodie at first lol. Figurred it must be a box turtle but that far north definitley makes sense for it to be a wood turtle. Also it goes to show how cold tolerant these animals are. It's been pretty cold here in NJ but that didn't seem to stop this turtle just yet.

Oh and yes Ken, Leone has no "i" in it lol. No big deal Jason, no one gets it right.

Harriet, I had no idea there was a turtle rescue in NJ!! I will have to keep you in mind especially for all the badly hurt turtles we come in contact with. Every year people bring hurt turtles to us. Definitely a good contact to have, if that woodie was hurt bad we would have had to get her to you.

All in all we helped the turtle out and Jason got her back home.
It was a good day!