Boxy

Grammy found a box turtle on her driveway!  Being the good home schooling grandma that she is, she brought it over to us.

Yes, it's a box turtle in a box.  The Zoomlians named it Boxy.

Boxy was quite beautiful, amazingly patient and not too timid.  Choclo and Oob mostly wanted to touch him.  The rest of us were interested in counting the rings on his scutes (the scale like parts of his shell), and observing his reactions to everything. 

We determined that Boxy was around 15 years old - that's a little older than Mxyl!  Wow!

It was also interesting to see how different Boxy was from the snapping turtles we have found and the painted turtles we've seen.  His shell was much more three dimensional with a beautiful "tortoise shell" pattern.  He also seemed to have a shorter neck (although it may have been retracted) and a mellower disposition.

After a fun (for us) afternoon, we sent Boxy back to wander in Grammy's garden with gifts of lettuce and strawberry.  I may have been tempted to keep a baby turtle for longer, but I felt a mature wild turtle would be quite unhappy in a box, so to speak!