cooter daddy

Ok, even though my little wrens left the nest when I turned my head, I think I have mustered the courage to make myself a vulnerable father again. Yes, I'm going to put my emotions out there again. Honestly, I don't know if I have much choice. Today I became the proud father of at least 7 little pond turtles. Well, I guess they're not officially pond turtles yet. Ok, I'm the proud caretaker of at least 7 pond turtle eggs. Molly was the first to catch the rather large (about 14 inch diameter) turtle mother digging a hole in the middle of our back yard. By the time I got over to see her, she had finished the hole, and had already deposited at least two eggs. We all stood and watched as she laid 5 more eggs in the hole. After each egg was dropped in, she would stick one of her large webbed rear feet down there to press them into the mud. The hole was about 6 inches deep. Once the last egg was dropped, she began to fill the hole back up with the dirt and mud she'd dug out. Then she dances around on there to pack it all down flat before cleaning the mud off her feet and heading back down through the yard to the pond.
So I did a bit of research so as to learn a bit about being a turtle dad (wish I'd done that when my own kids were born). I found out that incubation period for the eggs is somewhere between 45-120 days. Guess I have to keep an eye open for the big day. I also learned that I'd better build some kind of enclosure around the nest to keep all the wandering nocturnal egg-suckers that frequent our backyard.