Rehab Released

In January I discovered that Rehab, one of my box turtles, was above ground. She was bleeding from her hindquarters, her tail had been chewed to a nub, the heels of her hind legs were scuffed up and she was missing a couple of toes. A mole had molested her! Poor thing, her body was too cold to get back in her hibernating den.

I took her to the vet, who, after digging in her rectum with a q-tip, proclaimed it to be patent, therefore she would be OK. We were given, I mean sold, a new special solution (concocted out of the vet school in Georgia) and I followed the doctor's orders.
Of course I had to keep her in the house after that, as it was then way too cold to put her out. A few weeks later a couple of the other turtles, Blocky (aka Hooly) and Mark, were also out. Seeing mole signs all over and fearing for their lives I brought them in, too. So the 3 have been wintering in our kitchen/den area.

Well, it's April and turning warmer, and with today being a day with nice showers off and on I thought it would be a good time to put them back in their compound. About an hour later the sky cracked open and it hailed! Small, but it was hail. At 8 pm I went out and Rehab was wandering aimlessly around so I brought her back in. I'll consider putting her out Saturday, weather permitting, so she'll have several hours to find a little hidey hole. Poor thing.

I've worried about our other 3 turtles and hope they were spared mole damage during the winter. I'll find out in a couple of weeks. I've had turtles in my yard since 1979 and have never had this problem before. Last year one of my friends lost a 4-yr old box turtle to the same thing. Her damage was too severe for her survival. I told her then that I'd never heard of this happening, although I knew I had lost eggs to moles over the years. When I make their new compound I'll have to try to bury the hardware cloth about 18 inches down around the perimeter to keep them safe. I don't look forward to that.


Rehab, on the left, and Blocky sharing a monkey biscuit and fresh blackberries last July. Rehab got her name because a friend of mine found her in a yard after several hours in the same location. We decided to get her and found she had a hole and bone splintering on her carapace. We took her to the turtle vet, she wore a patch for a year, and voila. I decided not to release her because she had lived with us for a year and I was worried she wouldn't recognize her old home. She's a real sweetie.