Nature

My dad was working in the garden and walking back behind the house when he saw something that “didn’t belong there” on the ground. He picked it up and it was a baby Eastern Box Turtle whose carpace measures about 1.25″ from front to back.

We think it is a girl and she is just so cute. We might keep her and found out she could live to be as old as 100 years although they typically live to be about 40-50 years. They are normally born in a clutch of 4 eggs but we could not find the others, I hope that snake did not get them.

We named the turtle “Danny” because we are not sure that she is a she.

Today my life changed. My sister and I were helping dad with a carpentry project when he saw a Copperhead and immediately killed it. I don’t like hurting animals but these are poisonous and it was going into our garage!

After we looked at it for awhile dad asked us if we wanted to cut it open, thinking we might find a mouse or something. We were reluctant but dad got a knife and soon he was cutting it open. We did not find anything that the snake had been eating but we did find BABIES!!!

Here are some photos that we took of the eggs and the little baby. I felt terrible but it was a dangerous snake. We have black snakes and we like those to keep rodents away from our yard and the garden.

This Copperhead would also eat the little baby Eastern Box Turtle that we found in the yard.

The photo below is of one of the baby snakes that was in one of those eggs. It was amazing and I never thought I would take a razor knife and cut something up but this was cool. I even found the heart and

I have a little video that Papa took that shows the heart beating. You can see it here.