Death of a baby Mud Turtle

I was very fortunate to find a pet store that had a baby Mud Turtle in the summer of 2003. It was purely an accident. As often happens when you are not looking for something is when you find it. Mud and Musk Turtles are not kept at most pet stores because I believe that they are harder to care for and also less colorful. The brownish or black shells of the Mud and Musk Turtles probably make them less attractive than the colorful Sliders, Painted Turtles, and similar breeds. So I was knocked out when I saw this small rectangular light brown little turtle. I immediately called for a staff member to bag the turtle, as if there were suddenly going to be a rush of interested buyers. The little gal (very short tail) was kind of shy, always hiding under the various aquarium ornaments. But she thrived.

She gradually got bigger, and then we moved to a new home, and after the move the aquarium was set-up again. A few days later the little Mud Turtle was gone. I looked all over the aquarium and turned over the various bridges and artificial rock formations. No turtle. I thought maybe he had somehow climbed out. I searched around the house and under the furniture. No Turtle. After another day, I decided to take out every piece of aquarium furniture (ornaments, rocks, bridges) and check it. These plastic resin bridges and rock formations are hollow-molded so they are lighter and cheaper to produce. Most of them have holes in the bottom at their base. I pulled out each piece, let the water drip out, and then checked the hole in the base. When I got to the rock formation, it was too dark to see all the way in, but when I shook it there was something wedged in there. Sadly, it was not a rock. I could not shake it loose, so I got a screwdriver and pulled the plastic resin rocks apart, and in the top layer of plastic rock formation was the little mud turtle. She was dead. Finding an innocent creature dead like that is grim. Drowning inside the hollow of a plastic resin rock formation has to be harsh by any standard.

Apparently she tried to climb all the way up from the inside of the rock formation and she got wedged in. Why had she done this? I am guessing that the stress from the move made the normally shy mud turtle more anxious and nervous, and perhaps when she pushed the rock base up and found the dark hollow, she just wanted to crawl far away from the chaos in the newly set-up tank. Who knows? Anyhow, it was a hard lesson to learn, but I have pulled out anything that has a hollow base which any small turtle can possibly crawl into.