I'm a newbie to this forum. However, I have had red eared sliders now for over 20 years. Last week I had a major trajedy happen with my "colony". 3/4 of my turtles are gone. I just had our trees cut down around the deck to give the turtles more sun and keep the pond clean. I went to clean the pond and found ALL the turtles were gone. After finishing the cleanup work, I went to the bottom of the yard and found one of the little turtles. He was alive. I put him in the pond and the next morning, he was gone again. We found him just outside the pond wall on the ground dead. I then found another of the small turtles under the deck, ALIVE!!!. I rushed him into the pond. Now I got a flashlight and went under the deck to see if there were any others. There was CRUISER!!!! She was alive but in REALLY BAD shape. I brought the two into a big pail with warm salty water to help the wounds. My wide & I were rushing to put together a small tank in the house for rehab when Cruiser died. There is still 1 turtle completely unaccounted for. The last turtle is doing well. His front claws may be gone. Not sure yet. It looks like they were trying to dig until they had nothing left.
I got Cruiser when I moved into my dad's just after my mom died. We're just hoping we can keep this last guy from giving up. It looks good for him so far.
At this point I am still trying to understand what I did wrong. Why would all the turtles leave? How did they climb the wall? Was it the tree removal? I was cleaning the pond immediately after the trees were cut. They are too scared to leave the water while all that noise was going on.
Rogue theory: I heard that the Nor'Easter that jst came through caused the barometric pressure to drop lower than it has since the early 90's. Did they sense this? Were they looking for shelter because they knew a flood was coming? They all tried to dig until they had no front claws anymore. I just can't think of anything else.
Thoughts?
