contributed by Roberto Gaitan
My nephew came across a Texas tortoise while on a surveying job about five years ago. He was worried about it trying to survive in the middle of a roadway construction site. It was shortly after finishing my coursework for my TMN class in 2014. I didn’t know much about the Texas tortoise but I knew some of its story. It is a threatened species with a relatively small home territory. I knew handling a tortoise was often enough to doom the poor creature. One of its defensive mechanisms is to empty its bladder. Unfortunately, the release of its water reserves often means a slow death by dehydration, especially during our hot summers.
I met my nephew near his worksite with the bulldozers and heavy trucks running back and forth. They may not see me walking across their path not to mention a small creature hiding in his shell. We released the tortoise away from the bustle of the modern world. I often wondered what happened to him…the tortoise, not my nephew. There is a new housing development where there was once an open field.
Another tortoise
Well last week, while dropping off Christmas presents at my nephew’s house, they had a Texas tortoise they had saved crossing the street in San Benito! The fact it was my nephew again is a separate wonder but how did this young male tortoise end up walking the streets of San Benito?
The nearest open land was about a mile or two away from my nephew’s house. He would have had to survive the recent sugar cane burning, somehow figure out how to cross two drainage canals, the open AEP parking lot, the San Benito Fairgrounds parking lot, and three city blocks to get to my nephew’s. How long had it taken? Did the local dogs simply not see him? Were all the drivers willing to swerve to miss him? How was it that before he got to more heavily traveled streets, he just happened to be seen by my nephew’s wife and brought to safety.
We joked that he must have had a great adventure. But what now?
The tortoise journey continues
You ever stop to help a turtle trapped trying to cross the road? If you don’t put him on the side he wanted to go, he’ll turn right around and try again to cross the road. That instinct they have of where they must go is so powerful.
Well we couldn’t let him continue traversing downtown San Benito. We are a small, and somewhat shrinking community, but between Sam Houston and Business 77, he didn’t have a chance. Not to mention the cats, dogs, resaca, and acres of parking lots.
What does any caring TMNr do? We look for help…even on Christmas Eve. We knew someone that was permitted to handle the Texas tortoise. His recommendation? Keep the tortoise until the cold snap was over. The tortoise would need time to find a place to bury himself when the weather gets cold. He provided some cactus pads to feed him and suggested Hughe Ramsey Nature Park as a place to let him go.
We live next to a patch of the National Wildlife Refuge corridor but we’ve never seen a tortoise here. Ramsey visitors have posted photos of Texas tortoise encounters so we felt that would be a safer place. So yesterday, we took him to his new home.
A new home
We must have reached at least 5000 steps on our fitness tracker before we found the right place at the park. Plenty of prickly pear cactus around and open soft dirt for him to hunker down for the next cold front.
I have to say, I’m still worried about him. It isn’t so much the cats In the park or the large javelinas. I’m more worried about the people. The people that don’t care. The people like me before I knew how precious even the life of a little tortoise means to this world.
So the next time you are out hiking or bird watching at Ramsey, keep an eye out for a young Texas tortoise that has the walk of a San Benito Greyhound in Harlingen Cardinal territory. He may seem a little cocky, but he’s had a long journey and has quite a tale to tell.
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