Lost & Found

Almost two years ago Connie 'rescued' a Florida Red-bellied Cooter from a a huge construction site. It's home, a small swampy area, was being dug up and bulldozed into a large rainwater retention pond. If she hadn't picked it up it probably wouldn't have survived for very long. She brought it home and introduced it to our pond, thinking that the next day we would catch it and relocate it to a larger, natural body of water. Of course, the next day the turtle was nowhere to be found. In the meantime, I've searched every foot of our third of an acre, natural yard. We are completely fenced but, of course turtles are consummate diggers so even though there are no water features in our neighborhood, it's possible that the turtle left on it's own 'adventure'. That's what we thought until three days ago. I went out to feed the fish like every morning, and there it was...floating in the pond, head up looking at me. I went inside to grab my camera and when I got back, it had disappeared. I've been playing this game with it for three days now, and finally managed to get a few shots of it this morning. Not great shots, but hey, I'll take them! This turtle is about 30% larger than the introduced one, and we are missing three large sunfish, which I 'blamed' on owls and/or hawks. Now I'm not sure at all about that! Hmmm