Turtle Swarm

I wanted to post this stuff especially for Rish Outfield. I don't know anyone who likes the various freshwater creatures that a person can have as pets as much as Rish does. He's got salamanders, newts, frogs, fish, and, as you might have guessed from the post title, turtles galore in his aquariums. Every action figure he sells is promoted by a picture of it standing in front of his fish tank. So, when we went to Hermann Park a little while ago and saw this, I knew I had to share with him. I know it won't quite live up to the awesomeness of my bat video, but it's something kind of like it.

If you aren't Rish, and you dig it too, well, then, bonus!

This is McGovern Lake, a man made lake in the middle of Hermann Park. It is home to any creature that wants to be there, I suppose. Lots of waterfowl frequent the area. So much so that they named one of the islands in the lake Bird Island. But it seems like the turtles may possibly outnumber the birds.

The other day, when we went to the park, and were standing near the shore of the lake, a whole mess of turtles came swimming over to us as if they were pigeons waiting for some bread crumbs. I've never seen anything like it.

But I have to admit it was pretty cool. Before coming to Texas, I'd never seen a turtle in the wild.

My brother had them as pets growing up, and they always seemed so clumsy and worthless--barely able to eat the goldfish that we provided for them even when there was a huge swarm--that I could hardly believe they could survive in the wild, but I suppose here's proof that they do.

Not only that, but they get way, way bigger if they're not kept in a tank.

Looks like they're all red-eared sliders, which is what my brother had in his tank when I was younger. It makes me wonder if they are actually native to the area, or just a bunch of pets that people got sick of and turned loose in the wild. Wikipedia says that they are native of our area, though, so maybe not.

Here is the video of the things swarming us like a bunch of pigeons that I wanted to share. Hopefully, you like it as much as I did.



Oh, I also wanted to show this picture. Here's a bunch of turtles sunning themselves on some logs. It's a pretty crappy picture, because I didn't have my zoom lens camera, so I had to take the picture with my phone and do a digital zoom. But I found it interesting to see something like this in the middle of a suburban park.

We went to Louisiana a few years back and went on a bayou cruise (you might remember that I dropped a camera into the murky bayou water and never saw it again) and we saw a lot of turtles sunning themselves there. In that case I did have my zoom lens, though, so the pictures were better.