Saving the World...

one turtle at a time! On the way home from the park this afternoon, I saw a very large turtle in the middle of the 5-lane road I was on. I've read about roadkill studies and how some people will actually stop and back their cars up just so that they can align their wheels to hit the animal the second time. I even looked it up when I got home and saw that an Ontario, Canada study found that "nearly 3 percent of drivers intentionally crush snakes and turtles on roadways." Isn't that awful?! I quickly turned the van around and drove back, parking the car (with my hazard lights on, of course) in the middle turning lane. The turtle was moving pretty quickly... for a turtle... and was already to the last lane it was trying to cross. I could see that it didn't have a rough shell, and it pulled its head in when I approached, instead of snapping at me, so I picked it up and brought it the rest of the way across the road. It was larger than I had thought - about 14 inches long - and as I got back to the van, I was wishing that I had had my camera with me. I got back in the vehicle and saw that another car was stopped about 50 yards ahead of me. An older lady got out and motioned for me to pull up near her. She asked if I had moved the turtle and I told her I had. She said that she'd read once that a turtle will turn itself around and head the way it was originally going if someone moves it where it doesn't want to go. I hadn't ever heard that, but fortunately, I had moved it the same way that it was heading. She said she had seen the turtle too and had stopped at the nearby park to tell them about it in the hopes that they would move it. Just then, two cop cars pulled up from either direction and asked why we were both stopped in the middle of the road. The other lady and I were just laughing at the situation and she told the officers that we were both fine, we were just stopped because of a turtle. Both of the cops kinda gave us funny looks for that one! We each went on our own way; and somewhere on the side of Bagdad Rd. in Leander, Texas, a turtle has lived to see another day.