Bad Attitude Farm & Forge LLC

The single largest threat to the North American box turtle is the North American who continues to chop up the natural habitat and capture the critter for sale to the public.  Most turtles who survive the initial capture and pet store sale do not live to their normal life expectancy of 40 to 100 years due to poor care and the misconception that they make good pets.  We do not keep turtles as pets.  Instead, we rescue them from injury and destroyed habitat with the hopes of nursing them back to health and providing a free range home in which they can thrive or leave if they desire.

The current human threat to the North American box turtle is so great that many states have created laws against taking them from the wild.  Some states have created a permit system similar to deer tags in an effort to control the population while not allowing them to thin out too much.

Kentucky has no such laws against capturing common turtles such as these.  It does have laws which forbid the capture of rare species such as the alligator snapping turtle and the chicken turtle.  In our wanderings, we have now seen two alligator snapping turtles and frankly, we couldn’t imagine attempting to capture one.  They are big, mean, and aggressive.  Kind of like a cross between a dinosaur and a bit pull who is always having a bad day.

http://www.kentucky.com/263/story/727686.html

Should a time come when Kentucky creates laws to protect the turtle population, we will abide by them and hope a provision is made for folk who want to do what they can to increase the population.  We have no problem with hunting for food (even turtles), but large scale commercial harvesting from the wild simply is not a viable way of life anymore.  Imagine if the commercial hunting of deer were allowed the way the commercial hunting of buffalo once was.  How many deer would be left to feed a hunter’s family?

Above is the first male box turtle to join our menagerie.  You can tell he is a box turtle because the bottom of his shell is hinged.  You can tell he is a boy because the bottom of the shell is concave.  That way he can mount the convex top of the female’s shell.  It helps him balance.

We figure he is a North American box turtle because that’s where he was found.  But we do not think he is wild.  He is very, very friendly and completely unafraid of being handled despite being relatively new around here.  So we suppose it is possible he is an escaped pet and could be an Asian box turtle, but if he is we can’t tell the difference.

According to Wikipedia, “their needs in captivity are complex and the capture of turtles can have serious detrimental effects on the wild population”.  Basically, don’t catch them in the wild and make them your pet or you will harm the turtle.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Box_turtle

We feel a bit exempt from this general rule because we have not taken him from his natural habitat nor will he or his turtle friends be held against their will.  Our pond area is intended as a refuge for many critters.  When finished, they will be able to come and go as they please much the way our mallards can take flight never to return.  The mallards don’t leave because they like it here.  We feel very much that by providing turtles and other critters with a protected place to breed, we are helping their population.  When and if we have turtle babies, they too will be free to leave if they want.  Chances are, they will do as they do in the wild and migrate when their population is too high.

A few readers are rolling their eyes because box turtles tend to live in wooded habitats rather than ponds.  Why on earth is this one sitting in water?  Well, although box turtles reportedly can not swim they seem to love taking a bath now and then.  I think their care is kind of like ducks.  Reportedly ducks need water for nothing other than drinking.  They are often raised for meat and eggs the same way chickens are.  The thing is, they are simply not happy without a large body of water in which to swim, play, mate, and frolic.

I think the books about box turtles as pets might be predisposed to providing false information to the public.  They are probably written by the same people who sell the poor critters as pets.  We say the only way to keep them is free range and the hope that they stick around.