I finished another chapter of Children's Spirituality but forgot to save the post, so you'll have to endure this instead.
1) This week I learned that our county Humane Society began as an Animal and Child Welfare Society. It turns out, Animal Welfare existed before Child Welfare. I'm still processing that one.
2) Our silver maple tree is a gray squirrel apartment house if you're into observing wildlife. (But the baby squirrels aren't babies anymore.) The squirrels tease the puppies tempting them from the base of the tree just past the fence line instead of staring down at them from their hole at the top of the tree.
3) We have these HUGE black birds of prey that fly over Highland Park but I don't know what they are. There are oodles of crows, too, but they're much bigger than crows. (turkey vultures, as it turns out.)
4) The best part! This morning I'm staring at the meadow length grass in my city yard wondering why I never seem to have our yard together for the Lilac Festival like the rest of the neighborhood ... and suddenly I'm staring at a large (6-8 inch) turtle in the corner of my yard at the base of a tree trunk . We're a good 1/2- 3/4 mile from significant natural (turtle-friendly) water sources each on the other side of a busy city street. Maybe an escaped pet.
I left the turtle in the yard and it wandered into the grass so I figured it would be fine. (Like the squirrels, it hugged the fenceline so the puppies didn't find it.) At lunchtime it's in the same place and drying out so I pour some water on it and set the dish a couple feet away and it finds the water. Very cool.
I look up NYS turtles on line and thinking it's a kind of turtle people raise as pets from the SW or SE US (not to be released into the Eastern US) so I put it in an old guinea pig cage because the Buffalo website said to take it to the Humane Society or find it a home. Looking more closely, the turtle has a cracked shell and it looks more like native NYS turtle pictures.
So I call the wild life rehabilitators at East Ridge Veterinary and they take a look. It's an Eastern Painted Turtle (native to NYS) , the injury is over a week old, it didn't need rehabilitating (turtles may carry salmonella but, he said, they have great immune systems) . Thus a happy ending.
Turtles may be slow but just for the record, that turtle didn't stop moving from the time I scooped it up with the shovel, put it into the cage, bumped it around on the drive to Irondequiot or even while the wildlife rehabilitator handled him - not once did it hide in it's shell.
If you find native turtles on the move in bizarre places between now and the middle of June, he said it's mating season. If you and your kids are visiting ponds and streams, keep your eyes open for turtles!
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My dad always used to stop and pick up turtles along the road. Once we had a giant snapping turtle.
ReplyDeleteAs for giant birds of prey, the things that come to mind are hawks, turkey vultures, or pterodactyls.
I'm guessing they're pterodactyls...related to turtles, aren't they? :)
ReplyDeleteOne of my coworkers said a giant black bird of prey ate the baby robins out of the nest in their front yard. I said, "You mean, like a crow?" Her response was, "No! You should have seen this thing - it was huge!"
ReplyDeleteSo my vote is for pterodactyls too. Mean pterodactyls.