The Yellow Bellied Slider

Just yesterday we were driving through the park and encountered an older couple watching a turtle. It turns out the turtle was a Yellow Bellied Slider female laying eggs. She was a pretty good size turtle as you can see from the pictures. We did some research and found she was bigger even than she was supposed to be. Wikapedia says she should be 8-10” long, Kat’s ‘Croc’ is 10”, which is not a size 10 because that would be a big foot for Kat who is more like a size 6 just so we keep that straight. Anyway, you can see she was a couple of inches longer than that. I had to run back to the RV to get the camera and missed getting shots of the eggs and laying but it was neat. She laid 20 some white, ¾” eggs and they will take 2-3 months to hatch and then the young may stay in the hole until spring, before they go to the water. Don’t know how that works but that’s what Wikapedia says. She dug the hole and covered it with her hind feet and returned to the water. Just like National Geo. We watched to make sure she made it OK. She got hung up in some down branches and I thought I might have to do some rescue work. I even went to get my extendable pole to help push her, but she got unstuck by herself. And today her nest is undisturbed. We read that raccoons are a natural predator of turtles and their eggs and we have plenty of raccoons, but no problem. So these eggs have a good start.