Box Turtles

Easy to like, hard to help

photos by julie wiatt

Not a frequently seen member of the community

Somewhere buried deep in my memory is a hazy recollection of standing on my front yard as a child, staring down at a turtle as it crossed our lawn.  I recall that one of the neighbor kids was with me, poking at the animal with a stick to make its shell close up tight. 

I have no idea how old I was when this happened, but I know that was the only time in my entire life I have ever seen a wild box turtle.  I know it must have been one, because only the box turtles close their shells up that way.  And although as an adult I have spent hours and hours hiking through woods, camping in parks and rambling down country roads, I have never had the good fortune to see another one. Birds, salamanders, frogs, toads, foxes, deer, and once recently even an owl… but never a box turtle with its lovely brown and orange markings and tight little canister of a shell.   

You can see plenty of other turtles in our area’s public ponds.  Go to Brookside Gardens, for instance, and you’ll see lots of painted turtles swimming around, and sometimes even a snapping turtle, too.  But finding a box turtle would be a rare event indeed. 

It was not always like this.  So many friends, especially those just a bit older than myself, recall childhood afternoons spent with a newly found “pet” turtle, which they kept in a cardboard box for a few hours before growing bored and letting it go.  Many who grew up in and around suburban DC say these turtles were a ubiquitous part of their childhood, like skinned knees and little red wagons. 

But turtles need more than we are giving them now.  We may have changed the land around them too much. 

And box turtles don’t just need wooded areas.  “They need a mosaic of environments to continue to survive,” says Sandy Barnett, president of the Mid-Atlantic Turtle and Tortoise Society.  That mosaic may include woodlands, meadows, a water source like a creek or a pond and maybe even a marshy spot, too. 

So if you are lucky enough to stumble upon one of these animals while you are out hiking, Barnett and other turtle researchers say that you should simply leave it alone.  Observe it, enjoy the sight, then walk on and leave it to its business.  Picking up the animal can be stressful for it and greatly endanger its health. 

Eastern box turtle markings

People sometimes move turtles out of concern for the animals’ well-being.  Drivers along busy roads, for example, sometimes pick up the animals and try to relocate them to what they think is a better location, such as a pond several miles away.  Barnett says this rarely has the intended consequence of saving the turtle, especially in the case of box turtles, which have what she calls “sight fidelity to a home range.”  In other words, if you move them they will try over and over again to return to their original home area.  If they are unable to locate it they simply remain continually on the move, becoming slowly dehydrated, weakened and sometimes diseased.  This has been well documented; Barnett says that recent research shows upwards of 80 percent of displaced box turtles die.  (If you do see a turtle in the road and want to help keep it from being run over, you can carefully guide it to the other side, but be sure to help it go in the direction it had started towards.  Don’t pick it up and turn it around to the opposite direction, even if that seems like a better spot to your human eyes.)

Keeping a wild turtle as a pet, even for a short time, can also be deadly since the animal may catch viruses from you or your pets, including viruses which you are unaware you are carrying.  The turtle can also easily become dehydrated or starve while in your company, despite efforts you might make to feed it and provide for it.  Box turtles have complicated diets which include the seeds and fruits of many of our local wildflowers.  It would be almost impossible to provide these special plants in the amounts needed.

Box turtles, for example, share a special relationship with mayapples.  According to Brady Hartley, a naturalist from Brookside Nature Center in Wheaton, box turtles are the only known agent for dispersing the mayapple seeds.  When writing about the turtles recently for a Friends of Sligo Creek publication, Hartley noted that the “seeds pass unharmed through the turtle’s gut – in fact they have a better chance of growing successfully after that internal trip.  While other animals, such as mice and squirrels, munch upon mayapple fruit, they digest the seeds rather than disperse them whole.” 

So for the sake of both the turtles and the flowers, one can see the importance of leaving the turtles in their chosen homes. 

There is one more reason you never want to pick up a box turtle: you may get pinched when it quickly employs its best defense mechanism and closes its shell tightly shut.  Although it sounds amusing, this can cause a serious injury, especially to children when their small fingers get caught in the process. 

Its hard to know how to really help this important and lovely local species, partly because research on box turtles is relatively scant.  This happens sometimes – a species is taken for granted until one day we realize it is not doing so well and we know little about it and what it needs and what it has been providing for the ecosystem all along. 

To solve this problem and meet the need for more information on box turtles, researchers at a park called Jug Bay in Ann Arundel county are using their park and a sophisticated system of radio transmitters to track the behavior of the animals which live on their property.  The turtles in this sanctuary seem to be thriving, and studying them can provide a rare glimpse into the needs and quiet lives of this humble species. 

Back here at home in Montgomery County, I’d love to know if you see a box turtle, or any kind of interesting wildlife, especially if you spot something in Sligo Creek Park.   Give a shout out online at www.fosc.org.  The “sightings” section of this website has a place for you to let us all know all about your animal adventures. 

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