When I went out this morning to feed the chickens I was surprised to see not three animals, as I would have predicted, but four. A terrestrial turtle of some sort had gotten itself into the coop, but then was stuck! Poor guy.

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The sides of the ground floor are just chickenwire at ground level, so he was able to push himself into the coop fairly easily. Unfortunately for him, the chickens have been excavating their bottom level — they might be putting in a basement — and I don’t think he could get back up and through the wire. I, of course, thought this was pretty cool, so I ran inside and got Emma to see. We (she, mostly) got the turtle out of the coop and I took some pictures. He’s really cute…my best guess is that he’s some sort of box turtle, as those are the common terrestrial turtles in Florida, but he doesn’t look quite like any of the pictures I’ve found.

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Emma put him down and he basked in the sun for a while, then wandered off, back towards the woods behind our house. Can I tell you how much I love our house and our neighborhood? We live not a mile north of UF, but still have wild rabbits and turtles in our backyard, and a great variety of birds almost year-round.