The Amazing Franklin

This weekend we found ourselves staying home for a few reasons. One was that Franklin, our 6 year old Red Eared Slider, has been very needy. She gets something like wander lust a couple of times a year and refuses to stay calmly in her 50 gallon kidney bean shaped tank. During these times I worry about her a lot because she also starts refusing to eat. After a week of her not eating, I get really stressed.

This week her wander lust set in and for the first time she was finally large enough to get out of the tank by herself. We can't leave her out on her own when she gets in this mood because she will sometimes flip over and not easily be able to right herself. Turtles can die of twisted bowels when they get flipped so we try to watch her as she walks all over the place.

We know that she is getting toward the end of her period of needing to roam when she finds a place in the house she likes to dig and tread with her back feet. I have always wondered if she is pretending to dig a hole to lay eggs. The only time she had ever laid an egg was far removed from her wandering spells, in her own tank.

She had been digging a bit by the front and back doors this time. It was the first time she ever got like this in weather that allowed me to let her outside. She walked across the back porch, into the grass in the back yard and within 2 minutes started to dig a hole.


She dug for a couple of hours as RGBisMe and I took turns watching her. As unsettled as she had been all week, we felt allowing her to dig until she had her fill was the best. I had to take a break in the house for a minute and when I came to the back door I saw she was taking a little rest with her one foot in what was at that time a hole, 3" x 2" on the surface and about 6" deep.

I was shocked to see her move her foot to the side and start to lay an egg. I called to RGBisMe who had been watching her while walking the kitten nearby. He came over and said, "She is laying another!" Franklin just kept laying eggs until I saw that the hole might easily fill. I started playing turtle midwife and catching them, putting them to the side so she would not feel like the hole was full. My concern was that she lay all she needed to so she would not become egg bound.


Franklin laid at least 13 eggs and took another hour to cover them and tamp them down until she was satisfied. One exhausted turtle slowly started to walk away from the area that was just a little patch of brown grass, you almost couldn't tell she had dug it at all.

We took her back to her tank and because her float bladder had been filled to buoy her when she was filled with eggs, she bobbed on the surface like a cork. We offered her some food but had to let out a lot of air before she could swim down to get it. She was ravenous and ate huge portions of avacado, watermellon and scrambled egg.

I welcome any and all suggestions how to build her a place to dig if this happens at a time during the colder months. A few key ingredients to a perfect spot must include: grass/ carpet like surface, something like sand to dig down into about 8" - 12", it has to fit in our house in the winter, Franklin has to access it from the floor.