Took this snapper to his new home along with the owls.
I’m not experienced with turtles and I thought he would be calm and boring, but he was really cool!
I made sure I got proper handling instructions when I picked him up, since I had watched videos before but never actually was hands-on with one.
In the car, he kept crawling around, and when I looked back, he had climbed up and was looking out the back watching the cars. I could see him track them with his head, so he did seem actively engaged in what was going on. I wonder what people behind us thought! 😆
When we got to the lake, he was all excited and a little more difficult to grab, but I got him securely and set him down at a nice spot.
He must have felt more confident back in nature, as he lunged at me and hissed, when he had been calm at the clinic. I took it as, “I’m going in this lake now, but not because you told me to!”
Mr Turtle shuffled in and gracefully swam away.
I hope you like your home! I released him on the kayak side of the lake as opposed to the more footpath and motorboat launch parts, so hopefully it will be peaceful and full of tasty food and a nice single lady turtle! Good luck, snappy!
He’s got some battle scars, but it will continue to heal and the crunchy parts will fall off.
His intake form was still on his container. He came in last fall (Oct I think, I don’t have the paper with me) and it’s taken this long to heal this much. He was hit by a car.
Thanks to our rehabber’s great work, he’s back in the wild. Her work using beeswax to regrow their shells back is getting international attention, so we are on the cutting edge of turtle rehab!
Her work using beeswax to regrow their shells back is getting international attention
That is super-double awesome! Great job turtle people!
From Amanda Leyden
Turtles are some of the most resilient animals on the planet. Despite an ever-changing landscape, habitat loss, and increasing human interaction, these little survivors continue to beat the odds every single day.
For nearly 15 years, I’ve rehabilitated turtles, and throughout that time many of my techniques have evolved. I like to describe rehabilitation techniques as having tools in a toolbox, not every case is the same, and sometimes you have to think creatively to give these animals the best chance possible.
In 2025, I decided to change my approach to shell stabilization by incorporating beeswax as my primary technique. Not only did my aquatic turtle patients thrive, but turtles across all species responded incredibly well, resulting in a 75% survival rate in severe trauma patients and a 91% survival rate overall for turtles admitted.
Here is the most extreme example from the post:
Injury photos - pretty graphic
Very scary injury, that must have hurt a lot. :-(
I was wondering what the yellow thing was before clicking, wouldn’t have thought of beeswax.
(Edit: and now I see that the beeswax was mentioned above, my fault for rushing to the pictures.)
I can’t even imagine! 😔
The shell is fused to the spine and ribs, so it isn’t separate armor, it’s more like if our ribs were external.
Genius. Hooray!
Lol that face, that amazing face. I know I shouldn’t anthropomorphise, but what a picture.
Also, I love its “hands”.
My wife went with and she was very “meh” about the whole turtle thing, and even I thought it would be relatively dull, but he was a really rad reptile.
He won us both over when we saw he wasn’t just trying to get out but was actually taking in all the scenery. She said she’s totally down for the next turtle release!
It was so much like a dog looking out the window.
Right at this photo in the video, she tells me to smile and the turtle and I both did at the same time. My coworker got a kick out of that too.
Loving your posts. Thanks for doing this work, it’s super important, keep it up!
It makes me happy to see you guys enjoying all the stories. I’ve got another person in another thread asking how to get involved with their local rescue, so I love it inspires some of you and entertains the rest.
If I had UBI and universal healthcare, this would be what I’d be doing full time. It’s much harder than my real job, but a billion times more rewarding.
So there was an other turtle thread on Lemmy a few days ago and someone mentioned it’s important to release turtles in the same location they were picked up from. I don’t know how crucial it is. Great work in any case!
This behavior is called site fidelity. I just looked it up for some more specifics, since I know next to nothing about turtles. It seems stronger in some species than others, and stronger in removed adults than young turtles. Nice looking write up in basic language here. I heard this was a thing, but I will have to learn more about it, as it sounds very interesting. It says tracking of released turtles have shown they end up wandering around much more than ones returned to their previous locations. It makes sense, as if I’m in someone else’s house and need to find something, say, in the kitchen, it’s going to take me a lot longer to find it than in my own house. Now be stuck doing that at turtle speed…for every single thing I need on a daily basis!
This particular turtle did not have a location available. All the other turtles had specific addresses to return them to, but this one did not, so I took him since I was going to a nice big lake to drop off the owls since it is in a nice sized state park.
