Florida Box Turtle

My greyhounds have been sniffing around a corner of the back yard for the past couple of days, I didn’t think too much about this as, well, they are dogs. This afternoon, my younger and most curious dog, Fuzzy’s Alan Alda (no idea why, this is his racing name – we call him Alan) came upon this turtle cruising back to his corner of the yard and felt compelled to observe from a safe distance the moving decorated rock.

The turtle was not too fascinated with Alan and proceeded to try and climb the BBQ grill cover. I thought ‘Wow, I did not know turtles could climb’

The climbing wasn’t going very well so I put the turtle back where he came from – outside the fence away from Alan, who was and is still fascinated – about this time my other dog came out to assist with the investigation.

I brought the dogs back in the house and continued the investigation (they went to sleep). Based on the markings, I thought this was a painted turtle which is fairly common further north. Upon closer examination I realized it wasn’t and looked it up.

This is a Florida Box Turtle endemic to Florida and an endangered species (overdevelopment of habitat?) Hopefully, he or she is tucked safely away in their corner and eating mosquitoes.