donatello

Move new places, make new friends, no?

D and I walked out to the Lullwater Estate for lunch last week, maybe it was Wednesday. It had rained the night before, so we were searching for a dry(ish) place to sit. Suddenly, I noticed a LARGE turtle sitting under the trees just off the grass.

His shell is probably 14" long. We decided to sit down there and have lunch next to our new friend. D named him Donatello. He's a pretty shy guy, tucked his head in quickly and then all his feet when we got too close. He moved his head out to watch us for a while. But he hung out right next to us the whole time we were there.

Yesterday (Tuesday) we walked out to Lullwater Estate again. As we got near Candler Lake, close to where we sat the previous week, we spotted Donatello again! This time, he was cruising over toward the lake. I didn't know a turtle could move that fast:

(double-click the video to start, i dunno where the "play" button is!)

Today we had lunch at Lullwater again, and sure enough, we saw our buddy! He had parked himself on a rock just out in the lake a bit. He's getting shyer... We were maybe 50 yards away when he slid into the water and swam away. He's got some lungs - we saw bubbles for quite a while before he resurfaced.

If you can't see him in that picture... well, maybe it's because he's not visible. But that's the same water in which he swam. I just aimed the camera wrong.