So there I was, out in a parcel of land slated for 'development', with a young Eastern box turtle in my hand. It was August of 2002, and it was right about then that I had one of those “oh crap” moments that one has after one jumps in with both feet before thoroughly testing the water.
I had rescued my first turtle and it dawned on me that I had no adequate place to keep her yet.
(Note: please do not try this at home)
I decided to deal with that when I got back to the house. I wasn't totally unprepared: I had an idea, anyway, and I also happen to find my self in possession of a husband who is a talented carpenter and general all-around handy guy. I wasn't to worried about the housing.
Feeling lucky about having found Ruby, I continued the hunt for a little while longer, but to no avail. Ruby had by then decided to start trying to get away from me anyway, and was proving to be a challenge to hold with one hand. It was then that I realized that something felt unusual. I hadn't handled a box turtle since my childhood, so I didn't really have any recent experience to tell me that there was anything different. Then it sank in: three out of four limbs had claws on the ends. The fourth did not.
I took a better look at her and realized that she was missing part of her right rear leg, just below the knee. It wasn't a recent injury: it was completely healed. She must have lost it when she was really tiny.
My first rescue was an amputee.
I took Ruby back home with me, rustled up a cardboard box to put her in, and then called a co-worker who had been a veterinary technician and who had a makeshift turtle pen she'd offered to give me (she was aware of my mission). My husband and I drove out to her house the following day, and loaded up the wood-frame-and-chicken-wire contraption and brought it back to our house and set it up in the side yard. I stacked a few small logs in it for shade and cover and threw in some leaves, a clay plant saucer for water, and put Ruby in her temporary home. I then prepared her her first meal in captivity: she was pretty hungry and ate readily. Chicken, grated carrots, chopped up dandelion greens, and minced tomatoes. Yum.
Here I will pause to backtrack some. In the weeks and months since I had decided to attempt to find turtles, I had been scouring the internet for information on the animals. Boy, is there a lot of garbage out there!
I found that there was an abundance of information for pet keepers, much of it in the 'box turtles are easy' vein (No, you should NEVER keep a box turtle in a glass aquarium tank for any length of time), and then there was also information of a somewhat dry scientific nature. Because my intent was to rescue as many of these animals as I could find, I did not want to scrimp on any effort to meet their needs. Why rescue animals just to eventually deprive or even harm them?
I kept reading.
While I did not have more than temporary housing for Ruby, I did know what to feed her and how to meet her basic needs during the interim. The temporary pen would work just fine for now.
In the meantime, the turtle hunts continued. More days passed, but no turtles.
Then one day, not too far from where I had found Ruby, I spotted something wedged down next to the drift fencing. I looked a little more closely, and sure enough, it was a turtle butt. Another youngish female. This one I called Fannie, for obvious reasons.
I was over the moon. I brought Fannie back to the house, looked her over closely and determined that she was uninjured. She ate heartily as well. Two turtles! I was on a roll!
The search resumed in the coming days. Back to tramping around slowly, looking very carefully for these amazingly well camouflaged creatures. After work, on weekends, for hours at a time, sometimes persuading my husband to come with me, mostly working alone.
Early September came, and with it, Hector. The first male: a real looker. You can see him in my profile: he's my avatar. I happened to peer over the drift fencing before stepping over it, and there he was, looking at me and then at the drift fencing. He too appeared to be healthy, was added to the temporary pen, and put away a good sized meal.
We were on our way.