Well  those that have been reading for a good while will remember Bright eyes, the wee just hatched baby turtle that Dh rescued along with hundreds of tadpoles last spring in the heat of the drought, we set up horse troughs into water ponds and helped hundreds of baby toads grow and leave, and then there was bright eyes, fall came on and we didn’t know what to do, try and move her to the closest pond or bring her in.. we ended up bringing her in, and I had a crash course on turtle care, a tank was got, a floating turtle shelf, heating lamps, sun lamp and so on and so forth, we got live food and fish for her to hunt if she wanted to as well as baby turtle food etc, and she grew and grew..

This spring, she was moved to a big outdoor tank, and she had a log, and mud, and one corner that was a slew like area, and while we did feed her a bit, as much as possible, we let her live a turtle life, she hunted bugs, and worms and fish and eat different bits of greens and sun bathed on her rock or log..

Fall came again and this time, we felt that she was bigger and ready to go to the pond, she went out and ungrateful little thing, never looked back! Go little Bright eyes go.. we gave you the best start in life possible, the books say that most don’t make the first year, you are past that now, may you live to be a old turtle and ideally, we will catch sightings of you in the future.

We did the right thing rescuing you in the drought and now I feel we have done the right thing, made sure you could do well on your own and when you proved you could, we have set you back into the wilds in our neck of the woods..

I kinda miss her to a point and the rest, not, she was really a wild little thing all spring/summer and fall, and that is just how it should be, so I am in a way proud that she was a healthy well grown small turtle that should do well..