Average Jane and the Turtles

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Dee at Voices in My Mind had a post today about a box turtle that her husband brought home for her son to see. It brought back all kinds of memories for me about the turtles we used to play with when I was growing up.

We lived in a rural area of Kansas City on a 13-acre plot, and there was plenty of wildlife wandering through our yard, pasture and woods at any given time. Every year, we’d catch box turtles, play with them for a while, then let them go. One year, at what must have been a parent’s suggestion, we decided to name one of the turtles and paint the name on its shell with white latex house paint.

That first turtle’s name was Pat, and we let it go after we got tired of feeding it produce from the kitchen and watching it pee when we picked it up (just like a toad, which were also fun to play with).

The next year, turtle season came along and there was Pat – except that the lettering on its shell had weathered so that the name said "Pot." Excited by our success, we started naming and marking other turtles. There was one called Zot (which was probably inspired by the cartoon "B.C.") and a small one we called Tot. I don’t remember any others, but there were probably more.

Occasionally a huge, washtub-sized snapping turtle would wander from one of the nearby stock ponds up to the corral or even the yard. When that happened, my dad would grab it by the tail and drag it back to the woods or pond. He said that they would snap viciously the whole time, cleanly severing saplings as big around as his thumb. Those stories made me equally scared and fascinated.

What wild creatures did you encounter as a child? Do you still see them around?

10/5/07 – I couldn’t resist adding this photo, which came from this site:

Comments

9 responses to “Average Jane and the Turtles”

September 27, 2007

super des

I caught a field mouse when I was little. Looking back, it must have been sick or injured to let me catch it, but ti didn’t try to bite me and I was so excited. My mom discreetly took it back outside while I was distracted, but I still remember it. I don’t think I ever got a chance to name it.

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September 27, 2007

Kennon

I would go on a road trip to Kansas every summer with my grandparents to see my great-grandmother and going out and “hunting” box turtles down the old dirt roads with my grandfather was definitely the highlight of the trips for me. Thanks for refreshing my memories 🙂

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September 27, 2007

Keith

When I was a kid, I cried to my mum that’s I’d just seen a flat dog. She asked me how I thought it was a flat dog and I replied “I saw another one trying to pump it up”. Wildlife, where I grew up ???

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September 27, 2007

Brian

If you want to relive those youthful exploits, there’s a bar in Venice, CA that races turtles called Brennen’s. It’s fairly entertaining!

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September 29, 2007

The Misanthrope

Nothing unusual from childhood. Now I see coyotes frequently and hear them every night.

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September 29, 2007

monkey

I grew up in a really, really rural area, so way too many to name!

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September 30, 2007

Cilicious

We had a box turtle much the same as yours, except her name was Pearl.
She was in and out of our lives then finally she left for good.
In central Denver, we had the occasional fox or coyote furtively loping through the alley. Where I am now, there are gopher tortoises on land, and gators in the lakes.
I like the gopher tortoises better.

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September 30, 2007

Suebob

I grew up in a very remote area. We had hundreds of thousands of acres of wilderness behind us (California coastal mountain range) and an ocean in front of us.
So we saw seals, dolphins, sharks (usually the babies still in their “purses”), king snakes, garter snakes, rattlesnakes, deer, seagulls, pelicans, curlews, shorebirds, shearwaters, quail, lizards, toads, crab, lobsters…it goes on and on.

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October 2, 2007

Rozanne

I see a lot more wildlife now than I did when I was a kid. I lived in a suburb. I did once try to adopt a toad I discovered in the garden, but my mom told me it had to stay out there since toads eat garden pests.
Now I live in a city–a city with many large forest-like parks–so I see raccoons, possums, deer, coyote, owls, and many, many other types of birds. Sadly, the raccoons and possums wander about right in my neighborhood. Even with all our parks, they’ve still lost much of their habitat.

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