Dave Taft A fortunate Eastern box turtle (Terrapene carolina carolina) can lead a very long life, very slowly. Records of individual turtles living well past 100 are not uncommon. One such creature was caught and marked on Martha's Vineyard in 1861, and recaptured several times through 2006. It was a hatchling before the Civil War.
Famously slow and steady, box turtles often spend their entire lives in an area about the size of a football field. This makes them particularly vulnerable to human encroachment and development. They generally will not seek out new territory if disturbed; instead they will tolerate the changes, perhaps unconscious of the alteration. Turtles will cross roads, sun themselves on asphalt driveways, raid newly planted gardens, bathe in the neighbor's cat bowl. Efforts to relocate them often fail when the animals try to return to their original turf.
Box turtles have gentle dispositions and, when bothered, can be counted on to “box in†all their appendages. A hinged plastron - the bottom half of the turtle's shell - allows the animal to pull its head, legs and tail completely inside, away from hungry raccoons, skunks, minks and, in urban environments, cats and dogs. True to form, a box turtle may wait like this for more than an hour for the coast to clear, eventually lumbering off to safety at a top turtle speed.
It is difficult to resist picking up a box turtle. They will tolerate being handled, but these encounters are by no means as much fun for the turtle as they are for the human. The turtle reacts as if he or she is about to be eaten.
Unless the animal is in immediate danger, leave it where you find it. We often believe we are helping a turtle to cross the road when we are actually returning it to where it started. I recall a pair of hikers I met intent on releasing a box turtle into a rapidly flowing cold water stream not far from city limits. The hikers had good intentions but, unlike the red-eared sliders in the Turtle Pond in Central Park, this species is not aquatic.
Box turtles are rare in New York City, and are often the subjects of study in parks and public lands. Consequently the location, date, time of day, and the direction the turtle was headed may be valuable information to record. Each turtle's shell is as unique as your fingerprint, and a sketch of its beautiful shell pattern, including any unique markings or scars, or even a quick cellphone photograph, might help a naturalist identify a longtime, infrequently seen, resident of a park or open space.
Though box turtles can be found in a variety of habitats, some of my best luck has been in the early morning, on summer walks along the edges of wet meadows or mixed woodlands. Here the turtles hunt for slugs, snails, worms, berries and fruit. Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island and the Bronx all host populations of these old city dwellers, some augmented by reintroductions. Encountering a box turtle still chewing a bit of strawberry, or bathing in a mud puddle, is a fine start to any city summer morning.
