The turtles have taken to wandering. All winter long the turtles stay in their ponds. They might pull out on the bank to bask during the day, or come up to our house to get fed, but they always end up back in the water. We were surprised, then, to see them leaving. One crawled out of the water, headed up the bank into an empty RV site, and kept on going. It went across the gravel, the cement pad, down the road, and out into the dunes.
We googled red eared sliders. We haven’t stayed here this late into the year before, so we hadn’t seen this annual cycle. It’s time to lay eggs. The eggs will take about two or three months to hatch, depending on conditions. After that, the babies have to stay out of the water for three weeks until they’ve absorbed their egg sacks, then they too can occupy the ponds.
