Learning from Recent Turtle Crossings

This was my second encounter over the past couple weeks with a turtle crossing the road. I pulled over, put on my flashers, and was able to help the little box turtle cross the road in the direction it was facing. I resisted taking it with me to Herrontown Woods for show and tell. 

An encounter one week earlier did not end so well. Driving on busy River Road, I saw a turtle ahead, halfway across my lane. I passed over it and pulled safely off the road about 100 feet further on, ready to go back and help it off the road. But more cars came, too closely packed to be able to react, and one ran it over. 

I'll only show one of the turtle eggs that spilled out of the broken shell. I thought of incubating the eggs, but lack an incubator, and it turns out that the eggs have to be kept in their original orientation. Turn them upside down and the embryo drowns. 

This troubling encounter raised multiple questions. Should I have stopped in my lane, before reaching the turtle, blocking traffic behind, put on my flashers, gotten out of the car and helped it across? The way people drive on River Road, that would have been risky.

Posting on our Salamander Crossing Brigade whatsapp group, I learned that the turtle was likely a red-eared slider, native to the southern U.S. but widely sold in the pet trade. When released outside of its range by pet owners, it will then compete with native species in local streams. Releasing an unwanted pet into the wild may seem humane, but does no favors to the local ecology--a particularly dramatic example being the Burmese pythons that have decimated mammals in the Florida Everglades. In a world focused on intentionality, so much of the damage done is indirect and unintentional.

A lingering question is how a female turtle manages to make room inside its shell for the eggs--each one an inch and a half long. It took a traumatic encounter for this most basic and obvious question to occur. As the eggs develop and take up more space, other organs compress, and the female eats less and takes smaller breaths.