[Diana in Wisconsin]

Look who showed up in my garden today! Lady 'Painted Box' Turtle. And she's laying her eggs between my leeks and onions!! After she moves on, we're going to fence the area off and see what hatches. She's very brave! She made it up the bank from Lake Barney, all the way across a HUGE alfalfa field, then across County Road M, (Husband spotted another 'smooshed' turtle on our road that DIDN'T make it) then another 50 yards across the lawn to the garden. She probably left home last Tuesday to accomplish all of that, LOL! Mother Nature just blows my mind...

[tubebender]

That’s neat Di! Did you know that Clusty search shows 5,380,000 hits for painted box turtle?

[MtnClimber]

How do the turtles survive through the winter?

[afraidfortherepublic]

She is so cute (turtle). I wouldn’t scream and run, if I encountered her in my flowerbed. I get a lot of toads here. I have no idea where they come from or where they go. When we had the pool they would get into the water and get sucked into the filter. That always sent me screaming. But, I don’t mind them in the flower bed. THey are so tiny when I first see them, and they grow so fast — from the size of a nickel to as big as my hand in a couple of weeks.

[JustaDumbBlonde]

Cute turtle. You may have noticed the pond in the background of my garden photos ... it is full of red-eared sliders, which is largely what the stores used to sell us with a little plastic bowl and the obligatory plastic palm tree that every turtle needs for life to be complete. The females lay eggs all over my yard, and they especially seem to like the damp and shady spots under/behind the shrubs that surround the house. I can't tell you how many little turtles the size of a quarter that I've rescued from inside the garage because they took a premature turn on their way to the pond.

Every time I see a turtle crossing the road, I pull over and carry it to the other side. A very large male snapper was quite rude about the whole thing last Sunday, and all the while I'm trying to tell him that I'm doing him a favor.