Stories

2023 Patients

Meet Enki

Enki came to us on July 3, 2023. Enki is a Great Barrington native and is estimated to be around 70 years old. He was laying on a boat ramp for 2 days. When we arrived to the scene, we could tell that Enki needed help. His eye is protruding out. Unfortunately, his eye cannot be saved and he will be having surgery soon to remove it. For now, he is on antibiotics and pain meds to make sure there is no infection before surgery. We will update this post after the procedure.

Meet Cedar

Cedar game to us on June 25, 2023. Cedar is a wood turtle Native to New York. I received a call from a wildlife rehabilitator who needed assistance with him. Cedar was hit by a car and sustained major head trauma. His skull is fractured, as well as his jaw, and his bridge was fractured as well. We did receive special permission from NY, to rehabilitate him. Cedar has been doing great in the short time he has been here. His eyes have opened and he is drinking on his own. Cedar will be staying with us for a year while he recovers.

Meet Yara

Yara came to us on July 11, 2023 and is estimated to be around 25 years old. She was hit by a car in a school zone, in Lenox MA. She has a fracture extremely close to her spine and is very lucky to not be paralyzed from it! She is also missing a small portion of her carapace and some of her scutes were sheared off. This little gal will be spending the winter with us as it will take a very long time for her wound to heal.

Meet Gamera

Gamera came to us on June 25, 2023. He is native to Vermont, and he is a Wood Turtle. We received special permission to rehabilitate Cedar from Vermont Fish and Wildlife. Gamera was found by a dog who decided to chew on him. His carapace, and plastron both sustaining injuries. Luckily the finder was attentive and called us right away. Even injuries like this are extremely painful for turtles. Gamera will be returned to Vermont once he is healed up enough!

Meet Luna

Luna came to us on June 30, 2023 and is estimated to be around 14 years old. She was hit by a care and sustained very serious injuries. As you can see in the photos above. Luna’s bridge which is part of the shell that connects the carapace to the plastron, is completely missing. In most cases turtles have a hard time surviving this kind of injury. usually because there is major organ damage. Luckily for Luna, her organs are intact! This will take well over a year for her to recover from. Her bridge will grow back, but it’s such a slow process and we want to keep her organs clean and free from bacteria that we decided she was a good candidate for using beeswax. Beeswax acts as a natural barrier, keeping her organs protected from germs and keeping it water tights, so she can still spend some supervised time in the water daily. Luna is carrying eggs. We have induced her once and were unsuccessful getting her to lay her eggs. We will be inducing her again in hopes she can do it. If it doesn’t work this time. She will require surgery to remove the eggs. If the eggs do not come out eventually that can kill a turtle.

Meet Bobby Ross

Bobby Ross came to us on June 10, 2023 after being hit by a car. He is a Lenox, MA native and is estimated to be around 8 to 10 years old. He sustained several fractures to his carapace, and a bad fracture that goes across his entire plastron. He also has a split in his tail. Bobby Ross should make a full recover and will be in our care for a while.

Meet Ash

Ash came to us on May 28, 2023 after being hit by a car. Ash is from Montague MA, and is estimated to be around 2 to 3 years old.

When he was traveling across a road, a wonderful woman stopped to help him across, as she approached Ash, someone ran him over right in front of her! As you can see from the photos he has several fractures to his carapace and plastron. Ash should make a full recovery!

Meet Leaf

Leaf came to us on May 8, 2023. Leaf is a Richmond Mass native. Someone ran him over and he sustained major fractures to his face, and a fracture to his carapace. Leaf will be staying with us for the next year while he recovers. Severe fractures like this take many months to heal. Leaf is about 23lbs and we believe he is around 60 years old.

2022 Patients

Meet Shelly

Shelly came to us in 2022. She was found by a biology student who was studying turtles in the wild. She found Shelly sitting in some grass, her eyes were crusted over and swollen, and both of her front arms were missing and severely infected.

Take a look at the photos of Shelly when she came in, and what she looks like now!

Upon her arrival to our clinic, we weighed her and then administered fluids, antibiotics and pain meds. Once Shelly seemed to feel a little more comfortable, we cleaned her up and applied ointment to both of her eyes as they had severe infections. Upon further inspection, we determined that her arms had been chewed off by some kind of predator animal, we think a raccoon. She still had bones exposed and both arms were severely infected and starting to rot. It took several months for her arms to heal. We are happy to announce that she has made a full recovery, however her arms will never grow back. We have decided that release is no longer an option for Shelly, and she will stay with us and become our official ambassador.

Some of you may wonder why or how this happened to Shelly. When females are ready to lay their eggs, the venture quite far from their water source. When they find the perfect place to lay eggs, they dig a hole to lay them in, which can take several hours. It is quite exhausting to venture so far out of water and then dig a hole and then lay them all. We think she must have decided to rest for the evening before going back to her pond. We think a raccoon could smell the freshly laid eggs and ended up finding Shelly instead. Over the course of several months as Shelly’s eyes and arms started to heal, we noticed some issues with her carapace (top shell) and her plastron (bottom shell). There were getting these little pits that were getting infected. We believe the animal that attacked her had also tried to chew on her shell. It can take weeks to months for small shell injuries like that to show up. But we were able to clean the areas and they have healed up beautifully!

Penelope came to our clinic in on June 25, 2022. She had been run over by a car. Her carapace was fractured in several places. We cleaned her wounds and were able to set her fractures. She has had a few setbacks with minor bacterial infections on her carapace. She is almost ready for release in the summer of 2023.