Eastern Box Turtle (Terrapene carolina)

April 20th, 2012. We were driving back from Hancock County when we encountered this...

Eastern Box Turtle (Terrapene carolina) in the middle of the road. Since we’re among the legions of people who move turtles off the road and out of danger, I walked over to pick it up. Most turtles retreat into their shells.

This turtle didn’t. It seemed more curious than concerned.

It didn’t retreat but watched me.

Even when I picked it up and walked it over to the edge of the road, it kept watching me. I put it down to make its way off into the bush. An interesting encounter compared with most.
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Identification resource:
- Savannah River Ecology Laboratory: Eastern Box Turtle (Terrapene carolina)

Eastern Box Turtle: Just Passing Through...

When I got back from the lake yesterday morning I met W at the entrance to the driveway. He warned me to look out for an Eastern Box Turtle that had been trundling its way across the parking strip where I park my car. I couldn’t see a turtle anywhere. We looked all around, figuring that it had headed off towards the woods. No sign of it. W poked around and finally found that it had crawled under a plastic container covering a hydraulic car jack.

I moved it over on a bed of leaves to get a photograph. Most turtles I’ve found tend to retreat into their shells and stay there until I’ve left. Almost immediately it poked its head out to explore its surroundings. It ignored our cat when she came to investigate this strange creature.

Soon it decided it was time to leave…

And we’re off….

Back to safety under the plastic container covering the car jack. It hunkered down there for a while and, when we’d all left, it continued on its way to go wherever it was going when it was so rudely interrupted.