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Author: Heather C Matson, November 2000.
Hopefully this story will get the ball rolling....
I have only been keeping box turtles for little over a year now. I have been reading about them and wanting to care for them for several years before I adopted my first one. He is a beautiful three toed box turtle, male. It wasn't soon after that I found him a girl friend. A good friend of mine gave him his first girl friend... thanks Jim! His name is Mulder and she's Scully ( go "X Files"). Immediately, Mulder started to do his "How you doing?" dance in hopes to impress Scully. Like in "X Files" Scully is to busy looking around at everything else and ignores Mulder.
For the summer, I built them a comfortable outdoor bungalow, so they can soak in the rays of the sun and bathe in the fresh summer rain. I did have an alien abduction proof top on their enclosure to ensure, they will be there come fall. Well, I did notice that Scully was acting a little strange. Scully was restless and dug lots of holes in the earth with her back legs. Being a new box turtle care giver, I got out the books to find out what is going on with my turtle. After reading a couple sources, it was conclusive that Scully was gravid and looking for a place to lay her eggs. I removed the male and within the week she laid four soft shelled eggs. She looked extremely rested from that point forward.
A couple months later two of the eggs hatched. It took a couple of days for the little turtles to get use to breathing and so forth, but the wait was well worth it. They currently weigh only 10 grams each and they're doing great; they're eating earth worms, wax worms and crickets. I am very proud of my turtles and hope that the family keeps growing. I knew all along Mulder and Scully would get together. :-)
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