Turtles Tales: The Gulf Coast Integrade

She doesn't have a name. I just call her "The Gulf Coast Integrade". I got her from a Craig's List post that said something along the lines of "Help! My roommate abandoned a turtle and I think it's dying!" I drove out to West Seattle to get her. She wasn't dying, but she was set up all wrong, had a lot of shell damage, and a severely overgrown beak. She wasn't able to eat anymore, her beak was so overgrown. The picture above is from after her beak trim, at which point in time she became the biggest pig out of the entire box turtle colony.

I don't know much about her, but looking at her body gives a few hints. The first mystery is her species. She is much larger than the other box turtles in the colony, which suggests that she could be a Gulf Cost box turtle, but other markers don't match up, so we think she's an integrade between a Gulf Coast and some other box turtle species.

Her shell has a very natural shape, suggesting that she was wild caught as an adult. But she also has a lot  of shell damage, some of which is clearly shell rot, and some of which is harder to pinpoint. She was probably kept incorrectly for a long time.


That's all I can really say about her, but she's definitely a nice, friendly turtle.