A year ago last fall Katie and I had an adventure with a tiny newborn turtle.   Diana will remember that I grabbed the baby turtle back out of the water right in front of a big black snake that was anticipating lunch.  This morning we tried very hard NOT to have an adventure with a much larger turtle.

Earlier in the day I noticed what looked like a big turtle in the neighbor’s front yard.  But the light was low and he had mowed his grass yesterday and I figured it was just a big clump of cut grass.  Later in the morning Katie and I went out to do her job and I noticed this trail through the dew…

…now WHAT I thought, would make a big wide flat mark like that?  Then I remembered the clump of  ‘grass’ I had noticed earlier.  I wondered…if there was a turtle, where was she?  So we tiptoed around a spruce tree…and found this:

Katie was not happy to be taken back to the house.

An hour or more later we went back outside and guess what.  She had maneuvered into the middle of our yard, on her way to the pond across the street.

It’s MY yard Mama!  I want to go see what she’s DOING!

OK, OK.  I’ll just sit right here and watch her.

Katie was again unhappy to be told to “leave it’ as we went back inside.

I was worried that she’d get smushed crossing the road, so I thought I’d pick her up and put her in a laundry basket, carry her over the road and let her go in the pond.

Not going to happen.  She hissed at me when I touched her.  So I figured she was on her own.

She’s made it to the pond safely now.  She would have made it faster if we hadn’t investigated her progress all morning.

Silly us.