Rusty Sleeps By The Door ~ When He Starts Sniffing And Growling I Investigate.

 Sometimes, it's a snake, more often it' a toad, this time, it was a turtle.

 

A fresh water, forest Box turtle, found at 400 meters A.S.L. pressed up against our glass wall. 

Turtles and I go back a long time

It would have been back in '58 or maybe '59. Either my parents or grandparents bought a small clear plastic 'turtle pond' and a turtle. I was a happy camper. I would feed the beast. Play with it. Clean its plastic pond.

Then, horror of horrors, it went walk-about. Look as we might, it was nowhere to be found. Sad doesn't even begin to describe how I felt.

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You never know your luck.

About six months later, mother was doing her housework. Yes, back then, housework was women's work. When she swept out the dust from under the sofa-bed, there was my long-lost turtle. I found his plastic pond, filled it up, plunked him in and he slowly but surely woke up and began to paddle around.

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Skipping ahead fifty years

M'Lady and I have returned to the Philippines, and we are beginning to create our garden/temple. One of the first major additions is a small fishpond for tilapia.

It quickly became a small fishpond for baby box turtles. They just migrated to the fresh water. M'Lady and I were amazed and thrilled. Since then, we have built a second pond. This one was built for our gaggle of geese and even more tilapia.

Once again, the Box turtles found our pond and moved in. We now have a breeding bale of Box turtles. We are still thrilled and amazed.

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Why we are thrilled and amazed

Where we live, nature is being consistently uprooted. What was once a semi isolated mountain community of farmers is now a bedroom community of commuters.

The needed natural habitat for the forest folk is almost gone. Our small compound is one of the few areas that can boast a native population of turtles, kingfishers, dragonflies, butterflies, grasshoppers, and beasties of all sorts and sizes.

This abundance of natural life assures M'Lady and myself that we have listened to our mother and that we are doing it right in our shared garden/temple.

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The bigger picture

M'lady and I are just two people on a few thousand square meters of tropical mountain rain forest. We can't stop what is going on in the Amazon, or the Athabascan Tar Sands. We can't stop LNG from being shipped from Kitimat to Asia.

But we can make things a little bit better where we live. And you can make things a little bit better where you live!

Brian