By Pat Foxx
REGION- Michigan is home to ten different species of turtles, four of which are a state threatened species. Names you may recognize include The State Reptile, The Painted Turtle, Common Map Turtle, Northern Map Turtle, and the Red Eared Slider.
Many turtles make their nests alongside the roads away from the water. You may see turtles crossing the road, baby turtles wandering the yards, or even injured turtles. If you see a turtle on a busy road and you are able, please stop and help it to get safely across by grabbing it by the back of the shell and getting it to the side of the road in the direction it was headed. Never put a stick or anything in front of its face, it may latch onto the object, and this could cause serious damage to the turtle’s beak.
Never grab a turtle by the tail. Not only could this hurt the turtle, but male turtles’ reproductive organs are contained inside of their tails. This would harm their potential to reproduce.
The turtle’s shell is really its skeleton, and it cannot come out of its shell. The shell grows with the turtle as long as the turtle has a proper diet, sunlight, and drying out space. The shell acts as the spine and rib cage and when you look at the x rays of a turtle, you can see the bone ridges in the shell. As the turtle grows the shell sheds layers called “scoots” and the bony plates are extremely fragile.
Jim McGrath, owner of Nature Discovery, a private nature center that teaches about native Michigan turtles, said “When you go to the State of Michigan DNR website for your fishing license it will tell you which reptiles and amphibians you cannot take. For instance, you cannot take a Blandings, Box, Wood, or Spotted Turtle because they are protected.” Roscommon County is one of the only areas in the state that has active Blandings turtle nesting sites. You can learn more about Michigan Turtles by visiting their website at naturediscovery.net.
Michigan Herp Atlas is a database you can access this on your phone. This is a very useful tool when you are out and spot a turtle, reptile, or amphibian and need to identify it.
After you pick up a turtle, be sure to wash your hands thoroughly. It is illegal for pet stores to sell turtles that are under 4 inches as pets to the public because of the risks of salmonella poisoning, and the risk is even greater with wild turtles.
If you are going to take a turtle out of the wild, it will need the right balanced diet for the species. The internet will tell you exactly what it will eat. They need filtered water, a place to swim, a place to dry out, and good lighting.
If a turtle is not properly taken care of, it can get horrible, painful diseases such as SCUD; a yeast infection that causes their shells to get soft and collapse on top of their vital organs. It could also get metabolic bone disease which causes their shells to curl painfully up and in, splitting them open and proceeds to pull at their skin. Just be careful, and remember, all turtles bite.
If you find an injured turtle, please call the Association for Rescued Kritters at 989-389-3305 or the Michigan State DNR office at 1-800-292-7800.
