03/10/2026
This is important
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1C1DY2piFw/
I am forty-seven years old. I've never left the five acres around your house.
I'm an Eastern Box Turtle. I've been building a map in my brain since I hatched in the garden bed where your garage now stands. Every rock, every log, every puddle, every seasonal food source — memorized over decades.
I can't be relocated. If you move me — even to what looks like better habitat — I'll spend months trying to return. Crossing roads. Crossing yards. Burning energy I can't replace. Box turtles that are relocated rarely stop searching for home.
I reach breeding age somewhere around seven to ten years old. I lay a small clutch once a year. Most nests are raided before they hatch. My reproductive strategy isn't built on speed. It's built on living a very long time in the same place.
My shell is hinged. I can close it completely — sealed shut, nothing exposed. That's how I've survived this long in a yard with dogs, raccoons, and lawnmowers.
Right now in early March I'm buried a few inches deep. Heart barely beating. I'll emerge when the soil warms above fifty degrees. That's two to three weeks from now.
🐢 When you see a box turtle this spring:
- Let it cross — it's going somewhere specific and it's been going there for decades
- Don't relocate it to a park or woods, even with good intentions — the five acres it knows are the only five acres it can survive in
- If it's in your yard, you share the property with an animal that was probably there before your house was built
- Mow carefully in spring and fall — box turtles sit motionless in tall grass and their shell height puts them right at mower blade level
- If you find one injured, contact a wildlife rehabilitator — they treat and return it to the exact location it was found
I can live to a hundred. The only thing I need is to stay where I am 🌿
