When I was a kid, we used to paint names on their shells with latex house paint. They scrape some of it off in their travels, but often we'd find the same turtles year after year with just enough paint left to recognize them.
LOve this entry! We had a dry land turtle that came to the back gate about ever third day when we lived on the ranch. I painted our names on it's shell. After we moved and the house was rented we found the turtle half dead with a stick by it. Long story but I was more then upset.
I kept turtles in my yard when my kids were growing up. They would get so "tame" that they would come out of the bushes for bites of fruit, grub worms or grasshoppers whenever I was working in the yard. I love the little note (turtle gone). How poignant!
I have a friend who is a turtle/tortoise expert. She keeps hers in big corrals in her back yard... the shells are actually sensitive. When you pet a turtle on it's shell it can feel it, the same way as a duck can feel you touch it's beak. So you were right. It probably wasn't pleasant for the turtle but at least it didn't last long.
thanks for sharing this, i'm picturing a turtle with a lovely chain, ala julia hatfield {at least that's whom I think sported the chain from ear to nose in the 80s, which i wanted so badly to do but knew that i would end up tearing my earlobe or my nostril or both}
13 comments:
Love it!
Wow. Novel idea on how to keep a turtle. (Hugs)Indigo
When I was a kid, we used to paint names on their shells with latex house paint. They scrape some of it off in their travels, but often we'd find the same turtles year after year with just enough paint left to recognize them.
That is a wonderful memory and I love the way it is drawn. I remember always being able to find box turtles. Now I never see them. -Cin
LOve this entry! We had a dry land turtle that came to the back gate about ever third day when we lived on the ranch. I painted our names on it's shell. After we moved and the house was rented we found the turtle half dead with a stick by it. Long story but I was more then upset.
This is sort of the way I probably would have held on to children if I had procreated. See why I didn't?
The underlay vulnerability in this is courageous.~Mary
xoxo
Hard to believe you did not see the same turtles again.
I kept turtles in my yard when my kids were growing up. They would get so "tame" that they would come out of the bushes for bites of fruit, grub worms or grasshoppers whenever I was working in the yard. I love the little note (turtle gone). How poignant!
I'm a good friend of Vickie's ...she's leaving out the fact that she built turtle corral's to keep them in. I was so jealous that she thought of it.
I have a friend who is a turtle/tortoise expert. She keeps hers in big corrals in her back yard... the shells are actually sensitive. When you pet a turtle on it's shell it can feel it, the same way as a duck can feel you touch it's beak. So you were right. It probably wasn't pleasant for the turtle but at least it didn't last long.
You Dad really loved you... that is the kind of ingenuity that love produces...
thanks for sharing this, i'm picturing a turtle with a lovely chain, ala julia hatfield {at least that's whom I think sported the chain from ear to nose in the 80s, which i wanted so badly to do but knew that i would end up tearing my earlobe or my nostril or both}
i still remember your kansas city turtle. or am i making up false memories again?
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