Taiwanese Turtle

Long ago when I was in junior high school, l remember riding in the van on the way to Fairy Stone, Virginia with my brothers and sisters and my mom when she swerved to miss a box turtle…. accidentally driving straight over it instead. :-(

Turtles are not an uncommon sight when driving in America, but I was surprised the other night while driving on a country road in the rain when I thought I saw one on the side of the road here on the western plain of southcentral Taiwan. I turned around, and sure enough, there it was. This “flower turtle” （花龜） is slightly smaller than my hand.

Having a friend who likes turtles to the degree I like to raise birds (well, maybe not quite that much), I scooped it up and delivered it to him last night.

In other nature-related news, 3 weeks ago at dusk my neighbor and I watched as a small bird (we thought it was a sparrow) flew in to my open door. I looked and looked the next day, but never found it, thinking that in a few weeks the stench would give the position of its corpse away. But yesterday morning, after having kept the steel doors shut for the better part of a week while I was out of town, I found a tiny bat by the bottom of the door… still living, but barely. I released it in the field across the street. So I guess if it was the same creature, bats can survive a long time without feeding…