Yertle the Turtle Goes Home

Sunday, September 14th we freed our turtle. In the spring we were putting in flowerbeds and dug up a baby turtle. It was hibernating. I didn't know anything about turtles at the time, so I thought I better check and make sure he wasn't dead, not knowing turtles hibernate, I put him in some water and he woke up. Oh no......what do we do now?????? It was cold outside and the creek was very cold, we would have killed him if we released him, so we decided to give this little turtle a home until it warmed up. We went to Petsmart and got a special tank and a couple of books, our "free" turtle quickly became an expensive turtle, since we had spent all this money on a "free" turtle, the turtle lived with us for a little longer than he should have. The kids gave him a name, Yertle, we had just finished reading Yertle the Turtle by Dr. Seuss, it just seemed to be a very fitting name. Last weekend, Hurricane Ike blessed our creek with lots of water and Bill felt like it was time to let Yertle the Turtle go home. Of course, there are pictures documenting the event I had to share. The kids had to say their last good-byes and were sad, but once he moved quickly into the creek, they got really excited.

Yertle the Turtle before he was freed.

Putting him back in the creek.He's finally free!