A Surprising Father's Day Reptile On The Tandy Hills

Today I saw something on the Tandy Hills that I never expected to see on the Tandy Hills.

I was making my way across the escarpment above the currently dry Tandy Falls when I looked down at the small puddle below the dry falls and thought I saw a watermelon in the water.

And then I realized it was no melon, it was a really big turtle.

At first I thought the turtle was dead, and then it looked at me and shook its head. The turtle did not pull inside its shell, or quickly move, like the Fosdick Lake turtles do, usually, when I get in their vicinity. I guess this guy was already in water, that, and there really was nowhere for it to run to.

To get to the location beneath dry Tandy Falls this turtle must have journeyed south from the Trinity River, crawled through the culvert through which Tandy Creek flows under the I-30 freeway and then waddled its way to the Tandy Escarpment, where it found it could go no further.

I hope we get rain soon to freshen the turtle's little puddle with some new water. This did not look like a very happy turtle.