Last night after their supper I let the dogs out and Emma went crazy casting back and forth in front of the target butts. I sat on the steps and watched, halfway expecting her to flush a grouse out of the high grass that surrounds her larger brushpile. Finally she found what she was looking for and knelt down to give it a close inspection. Thinking it might be another snake I rushed out to see what it was.
It was a Western Painted Turtle and quite a nice one. (They don't call GSPs 'versatile hunting dogs' for nothing!) I could tell that neither dog was going to leave the visitor alone, so I walked him out on the prairie a bit and gave him a head start. Then kept the dogs in the house for a while.
Posts
5 comments:
Do you have ponds near by?
We have turtles like that here in the mountains. For some reason, lots of people will swerve out of their way to run over them. After a rain, the turtles come out on the road and people run over them on purpose. This pisses me off, and if I see a turtle in the road I pull over and put it in the grass on the other side.
BA, there's a 'mini-wet-land' about 300Y east of the place. He was heading in that direction and I helped him along. It's mostly dry now, unfortunately. There are a cluster of lakes west of me, but many of them are highly alkali. I doubt he came from there.
H, that's disgusting. I positively hate the carnage on our highways. We don't have any shortage of them but I hate to hit even a kangaroo rat on the road. I'm very far from a tree-hugger, but I don't like indiscriminate death and destruction of anything.
We don't have any turtles here in Utah; all we have is a few desert tortoises down in the southwest corner. I can't understand why anyone would run over them deliberately. If it isn't bothering you, and you don't plan on eating it, why kill it?
I couldn't agree more, Bob.
Post a Comment