Today was Earth Day 2008. What did you do to help out?

I found a Eastern painted turtle in the middle of a busy road near our house, far from water, at least from what I could tell. I saw a couple people barely miss hitting him with their cars so I just had to stop and move him out of harms way.

I could have simply moved him to the other side of the road, but I felt like that wasn’t the best thing for him. I know that moving animals from their home territory is not a good thing to do, but in this case, it really did seem to be the best thing for him. I could be wrong, but…

I took him home with me and released him into the canal near our house. Hopefully this old guy will be happy there and won’t think of trying to cross any more streets.

Here’s a photo of him right before I put him in the canal:

PS. Yes, I do know that it was a male turtle. He had a long tail and very long claws on his front feet, typical of males.