Turtle Watch

I wish my camera did a better job
at catching our turtles!

Watching turtles can be slow business—and I have a bunch to watch.

Because we’ve not yet done spring maintenance on our fountain, we’ve not yet turned it on. The base sits out in the middle of our pond poking above the surface like a perfectly round little island. All it's missing is a lone coconut tree and it could be something right out of a cartoon.

We have four or five turtles that make their home in our pond. Normally, the plume of water from the fountain keeps them off the base. But this spring, that little round island has served as a turtle resort!

By mid-morning, the first one has pulled himself out of the water and up onto the fountain to bask in the sun. Two or three more join him within the hour. There, they spend their day lounging in the sun.

From the bank of the pond, I can't get close enough to them to identify them exactly, especially because they look little black rocks stacked on the round black island. Chris tells me they are eastern painted turtles. If so, they’re painted like little black rocks. ;-)

We have a couple snapping turtles around. too. Chris picked one up out of the yard other day. It was about the size of my fist. Holding it gingerly between thumb and forefinger at the outermost edges of its shell, Chris carried it back to the pond.

When the sun finally dips to the tree line in the evening, the turtles on our fountain slide back underwater, usually all of them within a minute or two of each other. It's like one of them suddenly says in a quiet voice, “Man, this was a tough day of work. Time to pack it in, boys.”

This is the moment I watch for. One minute they are there; the next they are gone.

Watching for that moment can be a long process. Turtles seem to embody patience as they sit still for hours and hours at a time. You just can't out-stare them. You can't out-wait them. You have to just hope to catch them at the right moment.

In the grand scheme of things, this hardly counts as excitement, but I have come to look forward to my turtle watch each evening. It's just one more of the small, familiar comforts that make Stevenson Ridge feel like home.