Big Mama, free at last

Yesterday would have been a good day to work out in the yard...overcast and in the 70s, no wind...but I just didn't feel like it, afib acting up and making me feel lightheaded. Perhaps I overdid it Sunday over at the shop yard in the sun and developing humidity and no hat with the chainsaw cutting down and cutting up the purple orchid tree which is showing no sign of coming back.

Which is fine I guess since it has never bloomed, never had a winter where it didn't freeze to the ground since I planted it. Why this winter finally did it in I don't know because it was the biggest and best well established as it has ever been. After I took care of the purple orchid tree and the big yellow bells dead branches I cut down two small hackberry trees and then used my pruners to cut back the two hummingbird bushes over there and then cut out as much of the virginia creeper that is taking over my big dewberry patch to the point that I'm not getting any berries, or rather, can't see them because as I cut that stuff away I exposed a dozen or so big fat perfectly ripe berries that went straight into my mouth.

After I came in and cooled off and rested, I filled the 5 gallon bucket with walking onion crap for the fourth time only this time I was working in the little backyard, the small fenced part of the yard outside the back door where the turtle pond is. I'd been out there for an hour or so when I realized Big Mama was not on her sunning board, also the pond pump was stopped up. I cleared the basket on the pump and then scooped out the crud floating on the top and no Big Mama who ordinarily would appear at any activity in her pond. So I knocked on the rim. That's the dinner bell. No turtle. Knocked again and again. No turtle. When did I see her last? The day last week that I fed her, maybe the day after that but I haven't been out in the little backyard, working instead elsewhere. I searched the little backyard. No turtle.

When we first bought the big 500 gallon stock tank and moved Big Mama out here from the Houston house I went along and lined the bottom of the chain link fence with bricks and concrete shoulder border pieces and made sure she couldn't get out under the fence which did not touch solid ground in many places. All was well until Harvey and the house flooding and after several hard rains over the subsequent years left water standing in the yard, it occurred to me that my brick border around the bottom of the fence was preventing the water from running off. So I pulled a few of them away in a couple of spots last summer.

I had also set up her sunning board on the edge of the pond with a ramp down when I set up the big pond so she could get in and out of the pond in the spring when she gets her walkabout urge for egg laying or when she's hungry after fasting all winter and she sees me in the yard, she'll climb out and make a beeline for me, being the source of food in her world. Well, that ramp rotted, had been laying on the ground all winter and I finally tossed it on the burn pile a couple of weeks ago and just hadn't replaced it yet. So this is what I think, she took a nose dive off the edge of her pond, which she has done before though I've found her in the yard and put her back in her pond, and unable to get back in she started probing the fence line and found one of the spots that she could squeeze under and off she went in search of water, food, or a place to dig to lay her one or two eggs.

At any rate, Big Mama is gone. I hope she finds water because red ear sliders have to be in water to eat. I hope she finds food, knows what is food in the wild as she has been hand fed her entire life. We've had that turtle for 33 years, since she was the size of a 50¢ coin, and truly I expected the kids to inherit her. I feel terrible knowing that I opened those few spots that allowed her to escape. She has made many attempts to escape over the years and we found her in the ditch several times when we lived in the city and once she had even made it halfway down the street before one of the neighbor kids saw her and brought her back. Well, she finally succeeded. Free at last.

I hope she survives.

the last picture I took of Big Mama, Dec. 20, 2022

If you want to read her story, click here.