In for a penny, in for a pound

Aw, hell, here's the turtle. When I was growing up, with Herbert Zim's Golden Guide to Reptiles and Amphibians, this was Clemmys marmorata, but recent work shows that it is closer to Emys and the name Actinemys has been resurrected for it. And it really was just crawling across the driveway last week. I stuck him in a bucket, hauled him to school to show my ecology students, and then turned him loose in the creek towards which he was slogging when he was apprehended. And it is a him--check out that tail, and his plastron has a stronger arch than my feet ever have.

I'm pretty pumped to know that these things are around here. They're not doing great these days. For obvious reasons--show me a body of water west of the Sierras that isn't the center of a tourist trap, housing development, or agricultural or industrial outflow and I'll explain the optics of mirages for you.

I really just blog about this stuff to make Darren jealous.

Go, turtle, go.