Musings

Getting in their heads

Abg turtle sunning foot out

I’m finding it difficult not to anthropomorphize about this turtle we watched catching rays in the big pool in the orchid room at the ATL Bot Garden.

Actually, most of the sunning turtles we studied had a foot out—is this a cooling mechanism? Is this a turtle gesture that is seen by fellow turtles as the ultimate in the turtle version of James Dean cool?

The best sharp-eye moment of the decade, as I told her, was L spotting a young (and thus smaller than adult-sized) poison-dart frog in the big conservatory! Amazing! (I’ve heard ’em, but never seen them!—and I don’t mean in the frog-tanks!)