So, on a warm south Louisiana day, around Mardi Gras 2009, my mother found a baby turtle in a ditch by her driveway when she was picking up her morning paper. 'Course, I ended up with it. A Mississippi diamondback terrapin, a species-of-concern, the terrapin of turtle soup fame. Baby terrapin was about the size of a quarter, and a bit of poking around the internets turned up that she was a "spring emerger" - she was hatched in later summer 2008 and immediately went into hibernation until spring.
We installed her in an appropriately sized plastic tub, and ran some warm water for her 'cause the weather had turned cooler - the doing of which led us to name her "Hot Tub". Actually, that's the short form of her full name, which is "James Brown Celebrity Hot Tub, doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo DOO, YOW!". Hot Tub for short...
Turtle chow and bits o' shrimp, time passes and there's bigger tubs and whole shrimp and even live bait shrimp and other bait fish, and eventually Hot Tub moved outdoors to a vintage clawfooted tub with an aquarium heater for the winters and oyster shells from one of our front porch sack-of-raw-oysters feasts. As you can see in a coupla the photos, Hot Tub's not particularly shy and will look ya right in the eye and all.
Coupla years ago she demonstrated her gender by laying a clutch of 4 eggs, unfertilized of course as she was without a beau. Now not quite as big around as a dinner plate, she's super-fast and probably stands a good chance - or at least a better chance - of surviving the hazards of life in the wild amongst the brackish marshes that edge Lake Ponchartrain, gators and all.
Diamondback terrapins home toward their hatching spot, she was found on the Northshore, she was raised in New Orleans. I could've set her loose at the New Orleans lakefront on the southshore, tho' she'd end up swimming across the lake and that's about 24 miles to the other side. So I drove her across and set her loose right near where she was found six years ago.
Hot Tub was pretty calm about the whole thing. At the lakefront on the Northshore, she picked up her head and was pretty obviously taking in the slightly briny whiffs of brackish Lake Ponchartrain, she gave me a look over her shoulder as I lowered her toward the Lake. She got her feet wet, and when I let her go, she disappeared so fast that the camera didn't really catch a parting glimpse.
Hot Tub hasn't laid her eggs yet this year, so there's a chance that she'll find a beau and make some babies.
Cheers, Hot Tub...all the best to you and yours.
