Another day for a critter

Today is International Turtle Day.  The shop this time is MichelesBowtique.

Daddy loved elephants and foxes, I love frogs, sloths, and red pandas, and my brother-in-law's animal of choice is the turtle.  I think he's thinking of the box turtles that are thick as thieves around here, but a sea turtle is what I found.  Besides, sea turtles are wicked awesome too.  However, my heart will always lie with snapping turtles.  Being from the Bootheel, I call these "snappin'" turtles or just "snappers."  Alligator snappers are endangered, but I've seen a few and I've gotten pictures.  You don't want to monkey with snappers, but they're truly beautiful in their own way.  I captured this feller in 2017 just outside Malden city limits.

I think this one was your regular snapper and not an alligator snapper, but I've seen both living in our ditches.  This chap was about eighteen inches from head to tail, and he scuttled off into the grass after I took this picture.  Some folks think nothing of running over these poor guys, but Mama and I wouldn't think of it.

I mentioned the other day that Grandma had a garden, and in said garden she had a number of berry bushes.  Guess what critters love berries, especially strawberries?  Box turtles!  Box turtles are incredibly pretty, and every so often my sister and/or I would find one by the berry bushes.  Usually we plucked a few berries, fed them to the turtle, and then let it be, but a couple'a times we took one home and kept it awhile.  One lived very happily in our flower bed for a year or so...and then our chow chow thought it would be a good idea to carry the poor thing around in her mouth.  The turtle wasn't hurt, but we took him back to the woods after that.  LOL, the things kids (and dogs) will do!

Oh yes, we also owned a painted slider for a few years.  This what those look like; NOT MY PICTURE!!!

Sliders are thicker than a whale blubber sandwich in this area, and they get to be about as big across as a dinner plate.  Tibby, as my dad called him, was brought into Mama's classroom for show and tell, and...I forget how we ended up with him, but we did.  We kept him in a nice bowl with some rocks and some water.  We fed him flies and turtle food, and Daddy got him a special mineral to keep his shell and bones healthy.  Every so often we put his bowl in the sun so he could bask.  We kept Tibby for about three years, and then Daddy said "He's too big for his bowl.  We need to take him out to the ditch and let him go."  So we did.  Probably should've done that from the beginning, but Tibby handled it well.  Daddy said that as soon as he was put on the mud he took off after a big water beetle.  

Anybody out there got any turtle stories of their own?  Kindly share.

Love, 
RagingMoon1987