Just now GD and DH were getting the yard tractor from the barn to bring it up to the house so they could load the trash cans on it and tote them to the street for collection tomorrow. As I went out to bring some kitchen scraps to the chickens and check for eggs, I saw a small mud turtle on the cement apron by the garage. I figured I'd point it out to GD when they got down here and I went to on to the chicken yard.
As I was coming out of the henhouse I saw a tiny form scurrying along in the yard - a baby wild turkey! I ran out of the chicken yard and called to DH and GD, pointing out the turtle to GD, getting the net, and telling DH to come. We saw the little turklet darting around after the hens, and just as I was about to snare it with the net GD bellowed "The turtle bit me! He won't let go!" Naturally the turklet escaped and we went to check the finger. It's dented but no blood was shed. I think I'll go sit down....
Drama in the Chicken Yard
:0)
LOL Sounds like home.. :)
Good luck catching the lil thing..
Why in the world did he put his finger near the turtle's mouth? Oh, never mind. It's a man.
Oh my, sit down and have a large bowl of ice cream.
Sounds like home happens here all the time :o)
Jylgaskin, actually it's not a man - it's my twelve-year-old granddaughter, who is more used to box turtles, which don't bite, than mud turtles. If we hadn't been so focussed on trying to catch the little wild turkey we would have warned her, but who thought she'd get bitten!
She's a big help around here, and our place is her "summer camp," since her parents work during the day and we don't.... except for lots of farm and garden stuff.
JYL OOP'S I was wondering when a GD became a man. LOL It's ok no
apologies necessary. Haystack
Glad it was only a mud turttle. I bet she loves it around there!!!
Oh wow.. I did the same thing!!! I'm sorry! I hope she is okay.. that would be freaky for a little girl!!
Well, she's a bit of a drama queen, as are most twelve-year-olds, no doubt, but she was fine. She did put ice on it for a while, which I thought was funny. I guess she's never tangled with a mud turtle before; we routinely deport box turtles that we find in the strawberries so she figured this one wouldn't hurt either!
She does love it around here although she'd rather not pick peas and beans!
Phew, what an exciting morning! Sorry to have missed it.
Sorry, I missed on that one, but a word of warning. Wood turtles are like box turtles, but are the meanest little buggers I have ever seen. My son came limping into the house one day with one clamped on his foot.
Did the turkey come back?
It was a mud turtle; I'm not familiar with wood turtles. We haven't seen the little turkey since that day, but we have a lot of deer that are obviously jumping the fence and having a party around the series of concrete slabs where I put out the chicken feed. The smell must attract them even when there's none left. DH is thinking about setting up a deer blind in the chicken yard!
What - deer like chicken feed?!?!? Say it isn't so!
Sure they do - it's corn- and grain-based so why wouldn't they? My DH baits them in the fall with corn and apples and sweet potatoes.
Sorry!!!!
Turklet.....love it....new word!
They do look exactly like they should be called turklets, don't they?
Absolutely they do! My neighbor's daughter brought us an egg she found in the woods and asked us to incubate it. I didn't know what it was, but incubated it in the Brinsea, and sure enough it hatched out and it was a wild turkey. We gave it to her and she is raising it. Cute little thing, and turklet is the perfect name. Well, turklet for boys and turklette for girls! haha!
How amazing that an egg found all on its own and lonesome in the woods would be viable! What will they do with the turklet (or turklette) - keep it as a pet?
I suspect they will keep it, yes. She was delighted to get it and I gave them some game bird chick food, which is what I use for my ducklings. They have chickens too so they have a chick waterer, etc.
I was amazed that it was viable also. I was so not looking forward to telling this little girl that the egg wasn't going to hatch. I put it in the incubator thinking "this is pointless" but of course I had to do it. So about a week later when I candled some duck eggs I had in there, I was so stunned to see spider veining in it, you could've knocked me over with a turkey feather.