04/17/2021
Please educate for the sake of these slow growing creatures!
This is NOT cute—this Eastern Box Turtle was painted by elementary school children in the far western part of Virginia and was transferred to us today from another rehabber for long term care. We know that the kids did not intend to harm the turtle and were merely having fun, but this is why environmental education is so important from an early age to teach respect of living things. This action may have seemed innocent to the kids (and maybe even some adults) but it is very harmful for the turtle. The amount of paint will now prevent this turtle from being returned to the wild until the paint comes off through mostly natural means, as using solvents on the shell to remove the paint can cause lung problems. Turtles also use their shells to absorb sunlight which helps them metabolically function, which may also cause problems for this turtle’s recovery due to the amount of shell that is covered. Additionally, our subspecies of box turtle here in Virginia is declining rapidly—actions like this harm the survival of an already at-risk species that could be heading towards extinction. We’re glad that somebody stepped in and got the turtle help, but please talk to the young people in your life about how important it is to respect wildlife—imagine a huge alien grabbed you and painted you all over without your permission. Now, imagine you can’t get the paint off, the paint can make you feel very sick, you are now in a hospital probably for a year or more until the paint comes off without anything familiar around, and you can’t go home until then. We don’t want to project our own personal emotions onto wild animals, as we can’t truly know what they think and feel, but this was most likely a very stressful experience for this turtle to go through. We will make him as comfortable as we can and try to expedite the process of removal as safely as possible, but all of this could have been avoided had education and intervention been in place to prevent this from happening in the first place. Swvawildlifecenter.org
