“I also have an adult wood turtle about six inches long.  Her top shell is the equal of any seashell for sculpture…it’s like an old, dusty, richly engraved medallion dug out of a hillside.  Her legs are salmon-orange…She has a turtleneck neck, a tail like an elephant’s, wise old pachydermous hind legs, and the face of a turkey–except that when I carry her she gazes at the passing ground with a hawk’s eyes and mouth.  Her feet fit to the fingers of my hand, one to each one, and she rides looking down….if an earthworm is presented, she jerks swiftly ahead, poises above it, and strikes like a mongoose, consuming it with wild vigor.  Yet she will climb on my lap to eat bread or boiled eggs.”

–from Edward Hoagland’s “The Courage of Turtles”