Along with all the animals my brother and I brought home was Myrtle and Tommy. Myrtle was a golpher turtle and was about 20 lbs and around a foot long and wide. Tommy was a small box turtle about 5 lbs and maybe 6 inches in length. We were, as usual, able to talk our parents into keeping them.
Tommy was content living under the bushes in the yard. He loved it when we would come out and feed him by hand. Golpher turtles dig tunnels, BIG tunnels. We found out how extensive her tunneling was when my parents decided to build an inground swimming pool. There was over 75% of the yard filled with tunnels.
A lot of people think reptiles such as turtles are dumb, but we found out that was not the case. They knew when it was feeding time and both of them would be waiting for us. This always amazed me. They would also come to us at other times for companionship.
They put up with the peacock and my parents poodles. The poodles also respected the turtles and never tried to harm them. It was cute to see a turtle and a dog nose to nose checking each other out.
We had found Myrtle and Tommy out on a road and they had just missed being run over by a truck. We felt they would be safer at home with us, and they both lived to a ripe old age.
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