Threatened!

On Monday, my husband brought a turtle home from work with him. He had been riding around with is in his patrol car all day. He said the turtle's name was "Chief." Don't ask me why he would just pick a turtle up on the side of the road. He just did! I don't pretend to understand.

He said, "I'm going to let it live in our backyard." However, Mollie, our miniature dachshund, didn't like the idea of sharing her house or yard with a turtle. She was driving me crazy trying to attack the poor thing!

My friend Michelle's husband is going to school to be a herpetologist (reptile researcher). So we took our new turtle friend to her house, which is also home to an African tortoise, some lizards from Mali, and some creepy albino snakes who love to escape their cages. Her boys (ages 5, 3, and 2) were happy to add to their menagerie and probably gave the turtle a series of heart attacks by taking it to play with all of their toys, LOL.

Anyway, Michelle emailed me tonight and said that her hubby came home and said that they couldn't keep the turtle because it is a threatened species which is "red-listed" in Texas. Apparently what we thought was a plain box turtle is actually a three-toed box turtle, which is nearly an endangered species! Ooops! We didn't know! So Michelle's husband is taking the little critter to one of his professors, who is studying and breeding these turtles.

Good luck repopulating your species, Chief the Turtle!