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| July, 2010 | |
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| The Western Painted Turtles of Penticton My little feel good story started last May. Two of my staff noticed turtle tracks in one of our bunkers. The tracks led to a mound on the south-facing slope. Since none of us are turtle experts, we blocked off the area and we did a little research. It seems that painted turtles like to lay their eggs in sand on south facing slopes, therefore we deducted that we had a turtle nest. We closed the back half of the bunker and put up a “turtle eggs, do not disturb” sign. In our research we learned that the eggs should hatch in 70-90 days. The membership was informed and we all looked forward to a hatch of baby turtles in late August. Late August came and went, but nary a turtle to be found. Not that golfers are usually skeptical, but at this point they definitely were questioning our theory. And, truth be told we were all beginning to wonder too. Thankfully I had a greens chairman that wanted to help prove that our theory was correct. With a little more Internet research he found that here in Penticton we don’t just have painted turtles, we have Western Painted Turtles. Western painted turtles reproduce a little differently. There eggs do hatch in 70-90 days, but the baby’s stay in the nest through the winter before emerging in the spring. When I passed this information on to our members they weren’t just a little skeptical, they just plain didn’t believe me. But the sign stayed in place and the bunker remained closed. This spring came, and again, nary a turtle to be found. Everyone, including my crew and myself had given up on the idea that we had helped the blue listed western painted turtle. Predators or the cold Okanagan winds must have done them in, but wait……. April 22nd and turtle sightings were coming in. We raced out to the bunker and sure enough twelve little turtles were cruising around trying to get out of the bunker and into the pond. With a little assistance getting over the lip of the bunker they found their way to the water. What a great story, twelve little baby turtles survived for almost a year in one of our bunkers. We decided to leave the nest alone to see if any more would emerge. After a few days it seemed as though there would be no more activity, and it was obvious that birds were digging into the nest to get at the old eggshells. At that point in time we decided to dig up the nest. We found numerous partially decayed shells, and unfortunately a bunch of baby turtle carcasses, but wait…….. one of the carcasses moved. We carefully continued with our excavation finding another seventeen motionless babies. We brought them back to the shop and put them in shallow trays with pond water and within twenty minutes they were all crawling around and trying to get free. My crew, my grandson and I carefully released all of them back into the pond near their nest. All the members were informed, and now they know better than to doubt the greens crew. I contacted the local newspaper and they did a good little article on us. Talk about good press, the whole city was talking about how great it was that we closed off a bunker for an entire season so 29 baby western painted turtles could survive. And so that’s the end of my little feel good story, but wait……. Mama turtle came back, and she brought a friend. We now have two new nests in the same area of the same bunker and we don’t have to convince any skeptical golfers that there really are turtles in there. |
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