They say you learn something new every day....well, today the girls and I learned that little pond-dwelling turtles like to eat fish. At the risk of sounding like a complete moron, I honestly had no idea that turtles ate fish...I always figured they were herbivores who fed off the moss and plants in whatever body of water they call home.
I had a followup appointment on my thyroid today, and the patient exam room we were in overlooked a large pond by our apartment (the doctor's office is literally across the street from where we live). We've taken plenty of walks to the pond, but I had never seen any turtles before - just fish and ducks and birds. Well, as we looked out the windows from the doctor's office, we saw a white thing floating in the distance. I just figured it was a piece of trash, and didn't give it a second thought, but the girls got all excited and said "look mama...look!! Baby turtles eating in the water!!" After a few minutes, the floating white mass came closer to our edge of the lake and lo and behold - it turned out to NOT be a piece of trash, but rather a dead, rotting fish floating belly up in the pond. Underneath the fish were two turtles - one large, one small - nibbling away to their cold-hearts content. The girls got a kick out of watching the turtles (which made waiting in the doctor's office that much easier), but I was so surprised to watch them eat fish!! The nurses were also surprised to see the turtles and kept coming in to watch the feeding frenzy - apparently they had never seen them in the pond, either.
Such a small thing to have learned today, and some of you probably already knew this. That being said, it definitely made me think twice about wading into a pond or lake without water shoes on...after all, I wouldn't want some little turtle mistaking my toes for a tasty fish!!
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