Catch of the day!

If you live in the country you should expect to see herps on the roadway occasionally, especially during the spring.   We always carry a cardboard box, for turtles, and a snake bag and/or small plastic cage, for snakes.  The following pictures are of this morning's catches. 

If you're curious, that's 4 three-toed box turtles and a snake.  More on the snake later.  The box turtles were crossing the roads.  We could have put them on the other side, in the direction they were going (some recommend this) or we could take them home to our 20 acres (with over 200 vacant adjoining acres open/wooded) and keep them further away from an asphalt road.  We choose to take them home.  We figure if we just left them,  they'd try to cross the road again, and it may be their last time.  The patterns are interesting as the turtles are obviously all sizes and ages, but all the same species.

Then there was the snake.  This was not a road find, but yet another that showed up at the house of the friend I mentioned in an earlier post.  This time there was only the one, a rather gravid-looking female.  With an attitude.  Can you see the way she flattened her head while staring us down?  This was taken after we let her go at our house, in the same vicinity as the others we caught last week.

Yesterday, we found  a red-ear slider, and an ornate box turtle at the intersection where a two-lane highway crosses over a four-lane highway.    Both displaced by the rain, and construction that had occurred.  Of course we relocated these two because they were surely doomed otherwise.  I also forgot to mention the box turtle found attempting to cross 6 lanes of traffic in town.  We rescued it too. 

Can't get them all, but we try to help those we can.  We hope you'll all do the same!