April 18, 2006

"We're Free!"

I have a feeling that is what a little grass snake and a painted turtle are probably thinking right now.

Jake the Snake joined our family last fall. Jason found him in the yard at church and decided he would make a nice pet for Gavin. We were going to redeposit him before winter, but the severe cold of December descended on us too quickly. He went into hibernation over the winter, not eating or making many appearances for several months. In March he started to poke his head out of his fake stump here and there. The other day we discovered he had lost his entire coat of skin in one piece.

Turtle - he never got a name other than that - joined our family last week. According to Gavin, he (the snake) said, "There's a car coming!" and then we saved him. I suppose that sort of is the way it must have seemed, though I'm sure at times the turtle wished he had died a sudden death rather than live in a rubber bin for five days! Gavin and I rescued him off of a busy road the day he had his blood tests done. At least there was one bright spot to the day! It was interesting to watch the turtle and I did learn some things about painted turtles once I finally took the time to do some research on the internet. Did you know the turtles do not genetically have a gender? Their gender is based on the water temperature they (as eggs) are layed in. Warm water temperatures cause all the eggs to be girls and cooler water temperatures make all the eggs boys.

Anyway, yesterday we took Jake the Snake and Turtle to a nature preserve near where we found Turtle defying death. We found a nice little pond for Turtle to slip into and some dead grasses for Jake to hide in. It was neat to watch them as they quickly slipped right back into their God-given roles in their habitat. Jake didn't seem to mind the separation, but Turtle did come back up once to look at us, then swam back under to enjoy his murky home. Maybe he did realize we saved him.