About a year and a half ago (November 2006), the wildlife clinic K volunteers with transfered a water turtle (yellow bellied slider) to her. A cute little guy, just over 7 grams and about the size of a quarter. Yesterday, weighing in at 125 g and with a shell about 4 inches long, we released her into the nearby lake. It’s easy to fall for a lot of the animals K rehabs. Their cute and tiny or just plain helpless and on the mend, but the turtles are particularly hard because K keeps them for so long. The following are a handful of the pictures we’ve taken of the turtle:
- the first 6 pictures were taken in August 2007 when she was about 16 grams
- the second 9 were taken in January 2008 when she was 25g and we were trying to tempt her into eating by giving her meal worms
- the next 6 were taken yesterday before the release – 125g and big enough to defend herself
- the last 3 were taken at the release in Jordan Lake
Good luck little turtle