Tamia Turtle

Adventure Location: LBJ State Park, TX

A ride around in the Hill Country around Johnson City, Texas was the big event today.  Nearly every bit of the vegetation is dehydrated to dirty brown or has vaporized and is totally gone.  It is a very sad sight for my eyes.  Many creeks that have provided beautiful scenes in the last 65 years are now bone dry and the vegetation turning dark brown.

These next two pictures are of the Pedernales River near Johnson City.  There is normally in the summer four to five feet more water depth flowing down the stream bed.

Ranch Road 1 is the loop road that goes near the LBJ Ranch.  Both the Federal and State parks can be accessed from the loop.  It is taken most times the Team goes past here because it is normally a very beautiful few miles along the Pedernales River.  Today the river was way down like never before and the place was still pretty scenic.

But the big story is a turtle.  As the Team was pulling into a rest area, my eyes caught sight of a turtle nest to the curb in the road.  When the Truck got stopped, the turtle was checked out.  She said her name was Tamia.  Apparently a tire had damaged her some.  Part of her shell near her neck was broken off and missing.  The top of her shell had some of the first layer of fiber scraped off. 

The facilities were calling me pretty loudly so Tamia was picked up and put near a tree in the shade at the top of the hill going toward the river.  When things had quieted down, Tamia was checked on and still sitting there.

About then a Wi-Fi antenna was noticed on the rest room.  The computer was brought from the Truck to check email and other stuff while sitting at a nice table where Tamia could be watched.  The temps were low 80s to keep me warm and a nice wind to keep me from sweating.  The computer stuff kept me so engrossed for about twenty minutes that Tamia sneaked over the hill and down toward the river without me seeing her. This was my office view during this time.

 Finally I spotted her down at the fence having trouble.  It was a rail fence that she should have been able to go under easily it seemed.  My feet carried me down the hill to see what the trouble could be.  There was a wire mesh behind the rails that could not be seen from up on the hill that had Tamia stopped.

 After looking the situation over, the decision was to pick up Tamia again and lean over the fence as far as I could and just drop her belly first into the dried grass.  She hissed at me again but behaved well otherwise.  When my fat tummy was bent over the fence as far as I dared and my arms stretched as far as they could there was still about 18 inches to get to the ground.  I hesitated for a few seconds but finally dropped her on the fattest of the spare grass to be found.  THUD she went on the ground. 

 My feet carried me back up the hill to see if she would recover or not.  It took several minutes before she stuck her head out and seemed to sniff the air.  Maybe she was verifying the direction to the water.  Finally when she got ready to move there was not a bit of hesitation.  She covered the distance to the edge of the river embankment in good fashion.  The last that was seen of her was her rump as she went over the edge of the river bank.

As for me, this was a great feel good time in a day of trying to have tooooo much fun. TheOFM.