This evening, Laura tried out her new waders in the pond, and as she was poking around the edge of the pond she met the pond’s resident turtle: a 10-inch yellow-belly slider. The poor turtle protested some, but did not seem too worried overall. At her size (10 inches/24cm) she is pretty much as big as they come. At that size it is also much more likely that she a female, as male sliders tend to be a bit smaller in size.

In this photo you can see her hurrying back into the pond, after we put her back down. She waited for about 15 Minutes, during which she stuck her head out several times to scope the situation. Finally she got up and made for the water at a pretty determined clip. It was about 7 PM and so the shutter speed was real slow on my camera (1/8 at 1600 ISO) – that’s why she’s a bit blurry. I did not want to freak her out with the flash.

Here is a shot of the pond from the Southern end. After we let her go, she swam around in circles right there for about 20 Minutes before she disappeared.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 19th, 2010 at 8:15 pm and is filed under Mother Earth, North Carolina, Our gang. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.