I Found A Turtle In The Road...

....and jammed on the brakes of my Jimmy GMC to pick it up. I jumped out the truck and ran backwards to the turtle, grabbed it, then ran back to my truck and put it in a box to bring back to my pond at the Luck Cabin. Safe and far away from any busy roads!

I hadn't seen any box turtles at my pond yet (only two snapping turtles just this week) - and had been wishing for some turtles to come hang around. :)

I waited behind some tall ferns for Lil' Boxy to pop out it's head and check out the cool place it now could live.... I sensed a look of approval and appraisal.

A whole pond to itself to start a family! Yay!

XOXoxox

Big Green Shelled Snapping Turtle

Oh my gawd, being from Louisiana I have seen a good amount of snapping turtles in my life - some brown & ginormous, some tiny & crazy mean (lots of hissing and biting at me)... but this dark green shelled snapping turtle in the creek by my cabin is nothing like anything I have seen before.

Quiet, still, almost docile... HUGE, and most importantly not brown - like a snapping turtle of fairy tales rather then the pre-historic swamp monster ones i have loved.
It's shell and skin coloring blended in perfectly with rocks in the creek, the top of the shell being mostly smooth except for the jagged sharp edges on the back end leading to the long alligator tale.

If ya aren't sure just how big this gi-gantor turtle is... i tossed a quarter onto it's back for referance ---> check it out in the pics below.... and tell me if you can find any ID on what type of snapper this is? I tried looking it up, but having been offline for a month my search skillz are a lil' rusty.

That is freakin' big and beautiful! (not the quarter, the turtle.) ;)

PS - if ya wanna see something (someone) crazy... watch the turtle man video! I love him.

xoxo

Bike Ride On Willow Creek Rd.

I love riding my bike around here because there is so much to look at - but I wish going uphill was a hec of alot easier! I can only make it so far on my bike, so I have been scoping out Willow Creek Road over and over, flying down hill, then pumping uphill all slow and out of breath. Old men pass me by in their farm trucks and wave hello, but have a look of "WTF are ya doing lady!?!" on their face.
Passing cows, barns, brick ranch houses and some fields down the road I arrive at my destination. Standing away from the gate facing the road are endless rows of corn. Big Sandy Mush valley is really two walls of mountains protecting the corn down the center. Corn is the hot shit 'round these parts.
I jumped (another) red metal gate...this one was tricky. It is on a busy part of the road, and without thinking I went out right at 5 o clock, so way more people were going by then usual. I hid my bike in the tall weeds against the fence, pretended to be taking endless pics of the corn across the road and listened carefully for distant cars before hopping over the gate.
This place is one of wonder to me, I have felt attracted to it every time I saw it from the road, I felt like it was a forest similar to the one I lived under in Marshall, NC - my place that I loved but had to leave. As soon as I jumped the fence I smelled the sweet smell of that perfect mix of trees, of a secret pocket that doesn't get alot of human traffic, of native plants growing unimpeded. It may not look like much, but it has just the right feeling, just the right lighting, just the right scent.
The first thing I saw was this little "tree house" -- if it had just been a tad bigger I might have moved in!
But then I begin noticing some junk that didn't really belong. It wasn't a total dump or total loss, but here and there pieces of someone's past trash lay randomly spread amongst the magic. Chemical tanks...
Oh, and a washer... (a bunch of tires, metal bowls and plastic buckets were all part of the landscape too). This wasn't discouraging, I wanted to help clean it up - but then I heard a dog barking really close by and another sound that was probably a human doing something at their house- a house I didn't realize must be right over the hill behind the trees. I used my quiet stalking skills to creep softly away and back to the gate- silently hopping back over and getting on my bike.
On my ride back home I noticed a tiny creature in the road, a baby snapping turtle! I love snapping turtles and wanted to take it home, but then realized it had been killed in the road, along with some other baby snappers. :( Poor wittle turtle. After that I couldn't help but notice all the micro casualties in the road - so many dragonflies and crickets all smooshed by cars. Makes me glad I have a bike and will soon be jus' riding a donkey! I hurt for that turtle, and I don't really care if that's being too sensitive for most peeps living in this fast paced society.
Bye bye cows! Time to go home.
XoXo

Scooter Ride: Donkey, Turtle, Goats & Co.

Ya wanna know why I love going on scooter rides, because I always manage to find myself a donkey friend! Because of my seizures I don't get off the property I live on too much, so when I am feeling especially adventurous I like to be taken for a short ride around Big Sandy Mush. Bort drove me on his eco savvy scooter about 3 miles down the road to the organic farm I used to live at (back when I got the idea to start The Oko Box)! It's a magical place...so magical in fact that a DONKEY was waiting to greet me right at the entrance gate! :)
(Check out the ears on that guy! Yeah baby! I am so giddy it's dorky.)
I loved on the donkey, pet him, fed him a pear, made BFF's for all eternity - and then moved on to go on a little hike deep in the woods. There are so many acres, that are so pure and wild that many neato plants and fungus are growing everywhere! Check out this fungus below, that totally looks like a piece of coral reef.
And this vibrant periwinkle turquoise blue colored fungus growing on a wet dead tree limb...
Wild bee balm was growing in this reddish magenta color! We walked up a steep hill to an old pond I used to go to relax and collect apples by. Looking down from the rock I could see water skimmer bugs, bubbles from giant (snapping) turtles deep in the mud, and Bort cleaning off an Eastern Box Turtle he found on the ground. Cleaning off a turtle is kinda endearing.
aw.
That turtle is little and scared. :)
We then found the resident goats! YAY! This brown and white bossy goat was living there when I used to!!! We are buddies still.
This little black goat is a supa' star in the making... I simply asked it "can ya hold on a sec and let me take a picture of you?!" and it stopped eating, jumped on top a rock, looked at the camera, and *CLICK* when the pic was taken it got off the rock and went back to eating. Ha! Sweet Sassy Molassy!
Party's ova' ! Time to go back home and dream of having my own donkey someday soon.
XoXo

Golden Spotted Box Turtle

I found this turtle slowly walking through my bean garden in between furrows. I really reallllly really love turtles - I feel terrible about scaring them cause inevitably I have to pick it up and examine all it's neat shell patterns. The golden orange spots on this turtle's armour look alot like hand prints, paw prints and leopard spots... it's too neat for words so here's some pictures:
XoXo

Brown Box Turtle

Turtles have some hardcore armor. I was hoeing the ground in a thick patch of weeds and didn't see this turtle at all, until my ho slammed down hard on his back and clang off it like I'd hit a hollow rock. His head was still out and he looked at surprised as I was. A brown box turtle, just like I had in New Orleans when I was 11 years old (Tippy was it's name and it ran away during one of the many summer floods.)

In this very bottom picture you can see where I accidentally chinked it's armor, on the lower left hand side of the shell. Tough turtle... it waited for me to walk away before casually creeping off to a safer place.

xoxo