News From Turtles
What turtles can tell us about our planet
Ever since I can remember, turtles have been one of my favourite animals. When I was young and living in a suburban town on Long Island, NY, we often had box turtles wandering in our street or our back yards. It was fun to tap their shells, watch them pull their heads and legs into their shells and then wait for them to poke their heads out, determine that everything seemed ok, and proceed to wherever they were going.
They looked kinda like this one.
Of course, now I would never do anything like that!
But then, I was just a kid and none of us had any idea that we might be harming the turtle or causing it undue stress.
And at the end of the block I lived on, there was a fairly large pond. At least it seemed that way to me when I was a kid.
I spent a lot of my time there fishing for perch and sunfish. And when I caught any that were large enough, I’d bring them home, behead and remove the guts and my Mom would cook them for me.
Fresh caught fish! Yummm!
