SCOTT SHALAWAY Box turtles do everything real-l-l-l-l sl-l-low-w-w

While mowing a trail through the bluebird meadow this week, I found a female box turtle digging a nest. When I checked back two hours later, she was still digging. Turtles take their time.
Box turtle courtship begins in mid-May after the last frost. Males and females wander the forest floor and eventually encounter each other. When a pair meets, the male circles the female, occasionally pushing her and biting her shell. These preliminary rituals may persist for an hour or more before mating occur.
The male overcomes the obvious physical challenge of mating with a concave lower shell and surprising gymnastic ability. During the encounter, the male "stands" upright on the hind tip of his shell. He steadies himself by gripping the female's shell with his rear feet.
A few weeks later, the female moves to high, dry, open ground to dig a shallow nest. Using only her hind legs, she digs out a small hole, two or three inches deep. The sun provides the heat for incubation.
The bottom of the nest is wider than the opening at the top. Into the nest she drops four or five white, rubbery inch-long eggs. The female may take as long as five hours to lay the eggs. She then scoops dirt back into the nest and tamps down the soil with her legs and shell.
Three months later
Approximately three months later, depending on soil temperature and moisture, the eggs hatch. Broods that hatch in October may overwinter in the nest. Turtles that hatch earlier dig their way out of the nest and immediately burrow beneath the leaf litter on the forest floor. Here they spend their first few years of life -- hibernating through the winter, eating and growing in the summer. This is why we so rarely see young box turtles less than three inches long.
Box turtles are most often seen crossing roads after warm spring and summer rains. Warm rain seems to trigger a wanderlust in box turtles. Unfortunately, many fail to reach the other side of busy highways. We can all do turtles a big favor by safely straddling them when we see them on the road. Cars and trucks probably kill more box turtles each year than all predators combined.
But resist the urge to take them home. It may seem that moving turtles found on the road to a place far from traffic would be best for the turtles. More likely, though, it's a death sentence.
Box turtles spend their entire lives, which may span 60 or 70 years, on just a few acres. They know every mud hole, hiding place, and food patch. If moved to an unfamiliar area, they're likely to starve or be eaten by predators. But if you do take a box turtle home to show the kids, and I think that can be a great learning experience, return it a few days later to the place you found it.
True omnivores, box turtles eat a variety of plants and animals. Strawberries and raspberries, flowers and mushrooms, grasshoppers and crickets, earthworms and salamanders, and even carrion satisfy a hungry box turtle.
Box turtles grow slowly, adding perhaps a half-inch in length per year until they reach their adult size of five to eight inches. They are sexually mature by age five, but continue to grow until about 20 years old.
Found same turtle
The summer 2002 issue of Wild Ohio Magazine tells of two brothers, Wayne and Dwight Jeffrey, who found a box turtle in Jefferson County, Ohio back in 1942. Wayne carved his initials and the year on the bottom of the shell. In July 1990, 48 years later, while attending a family reunion, they found the same turtle. And 11 years after that, just last summer, two young relatives found the same turtle about a quarter mile from where the Jeffreys had released it in 1990. If it's still alive, that box turtle is at least 60 years old.
Perhaps this explains the slow pace of turtle life -- time's on their side.
sshalaway@aol.com