“Stop, Burt!” I braked.
We were driving home one summer afternoon in 2023 when Becky spotted a box turtle crossing our driveway and called out. I thought the turtle was probably a male because, as I got out of the truck and walked up, it drew into its shell with a hiss then stared back at me with red eyes. Female box turtles don’t tend to react so warily, and their eyes are brown. Then I recognized a distinctive notch in the turtle’s shell and held him up for Becky to see, decalring “It’s Dryback!” Unlike the rest of the box turtles that we were on a first-name basis with that summer, this one male left the top of his domed shell exposed when he cooled off in a mud hole we called Turtle Wallow. The other turtles there would sink deep into the ooze until only their nostrils were exposed.
Becky had been on the alert for box turtles in the driveway ever since a female we’d named Roverina met an untimely end under her car tire. Roverina got her name because we saw her criss-crossing the yard a lot, and if I picked her up, she’d stretch out her neck as far as it would go and keep right on walking in the air. She had places to go, things to do, turtles to meet, and I was a big bother. Her death in the driveway was untimely because box turtles can live as long as or longer than humans do, but to judge by Roverina’s small size, bright yellow shell colors and lively pace, she was just a sweet 16. After the fatal encounter, Becky, who’d been distracted just before it happened by the sight of two fawns in the woods, put up a warning sign about turtles at the crossing spot.
I well remember our discovery of Turtle Wallow that summer. It was nothing more than a squishy place beside the trail where spring water pooled to make a black, oozy mix. But walking past it one day, Becky happened to notice a yellowish “something” barely showing in the muck and she pointed it out to me. Fishing around in the mud, I pulled up a male box turtle. He came out with a sucking sound. Then Becky drew my attention to another mound a couple of feet away from the first. It proved to be a male too. Then I pulled up a female sunk between the males. Then out came a fourth turtle, then a fifth. Here was a mud-bound congregation of box turtles not 100 feet from our back door and beside a trail we’d walked for years! It made me think of a passage I’d read in Thoreau’s essay “Autumnal Tints” where he says that it’s “the intention of the eye” that determines what humans see — “the idea we have in mind, the concern we carry with us.” Then he gives a humorous example:
“A man sees only what concerns him. A botanist absorbed in the study of grasses does not distinguish the grandest pasture oaks. He, as it were, tramples down oaks unwittingly in his walk.”
Like Thoreau’s grassy-eyed botanist, we’d been so intent on spotting birds in the trees that we’d been unwittingly “trampling down” the turtles at our feet.
Turtle Wallow became the centerpiece of our summer. The first thing Becky would ask when I came back from my morning walk was, “How many turtles?” And once we watched a turtle push the mud left and right with his front feet and pivot his shell from side to side to wedge himself ever deeper into the muck — as if he were some kind of hard-shelled hog. You could almost hear him oink. We became so preoccupied with the wallow and its turtles that there’s no telling how many beautiful hooded warblers or yellow-throated vireos or blue-gray gnatcatchers we missed above us in the trees! “We cannot see anything until we are possessed with the idea of it, take it into our heads,” Thoreau says in that same essay, “ — and then we can hardly see anything else.”
Here are my notes from one day in our Turtle Wallow summer:
• 7 a.m.: Coming back from my walk, I see three turtles in the wallow: the male we call Yellow Legs and two grown females, one of them new to me, the other we’ve christened “Faded Female” because years of aging have dimmed her colors.
10 a.m.: I hear Becky call, “Come see!” Faded Female has left the hole she’s usually in and moved up to the top of the wallow into the alpha hole usually occupied by “Big Male” — who is nowhere to be seen — and now her old hole has been taken over by Roverina. The new, unnamed female I saw at sunrise is gone. We walk down the path on the lookout for her, only to meet old Dryback stumping up towards the wallow. He hisses and pulls into his shell.
• 2 p.m.: In the past hour we’ve beaten a path to Turtle Wallow, and our knees are muddy from getting down to look. I put a slice of cucumber in front of Faded Female. She opened her jaws wide and chomped it down. Then she took a second piece, but I couldn’t entice her out of the alpha hole with a third.
• 3 p.m.: After several hot, dry days, the spring has slackened to a trickle; so to keep everyone happy — the turtles and us — we lugged watering cans to the wallow.
• 3:30 p.m.: Faded Female and Yellow Legs are still in their holes, but Roverina has stepped out. Going down the path, I come on Dryback again. He finally emerged from his shell and is heading towards the wallow.
• 5 p.m.: Becky tells me Dryback is in a hole next to Yellow Legs. As usual, the top of his shell is exposed.
• 8:30 p.m.: By flashlight, we see Faded Female and Yellow Legs in the mud. Neither of them has moved all day. Dryback is gone. Roverina is gone.
Soon after Roverina’s unfortunate death in the driveway, I saw another young female box turtle crossing the yard. Her shell was orange and she easily fit in the palm of my hand. She reminded me of Roverina in the way she kept on walking when I held her in the air. If anything, her legs speeded up. Trying to get free, she pushed hard at my fingers with her back feet. I named her Roverita.
I wish that I could say we’ve enjoyed Turtle Wallow every summer since 2023. But below average rainfall up Moses Creek has dried up the spring, the wallow has lost its cooling ooziness, the turtles have gone their separate ways, and Becky has stored her turtle sign in the shed.
(Burt and Becky Kornegay live in Jackson County.)