Spring and early summer in Red Lake is when turtles are out in abundance.
Jessica Teichroeb, from Madsen, works hard to move the turtles off roads whenever she can.
This July, when coming from Madsen, Teichroeb saw a painted turtle on the highway near the Buffalo turnaround. She turned around at the nearest spot to go move it, saving a snapping turtle in the process, and found that the first one had already been hit.
She rushed the turtle home and attempted to help it, and put it into a tank with some water and sand overnight. Unfortunately, the damage had been too extensive, and the turtle did not make it.
Teichroeb then brought it out to the swamp by her yard to be recycled back into nature. She checked to see if the turtle had eggs, and salvaged 11 from her. She then took the eggs home and candled them to check for veins. All 11 had signs of life, and so she built an incubator out of a Styrofoam cooler and a small fish tank heater.
Painted turtles take around 60 to 70 days to hatch, and need to be kept at 28 C. Every few days she checked on them. Two of the eggs didn’t make it, and one started rotting. Then, the day before her birthday — Sept. 7 — one had hatched. Two more hatched a couple of days later, and the rest didn’t make it.
“I was like, I did it,” she said.
Turtles naturally have a high egg mortality rate due to predators and other environmental factors.
Teichroeb is of Indigenous heritage and knows that turtles are known to be sacred. According to traditional teachings, a giant turtle carries the word on its back. Some believe that the turtle contributed to creation because of the legend of the turtle that dove into the primeval waters to retrieve mud to create Mother Earth.
“To most tribes, the turtle also represents healing, wisdom, spirituality, health, safety, longevity, protection and fertility,” Teichroeb said.
Her three surviving baby turtles are currently only a little bit bigger than a bottle cap, but will grow to be roughly the size of dinner plates. They are being kept in an old fish aquarium with only three inches of water as they learn how to swim. They have plants in their tank; they also have snails and guppies to help them learn to hunt for their food. Their favourite thing to eat is scallops.
Teichroeb initially put the turtles back into the swamp near her home, but decided to keep them inside as it got cold outside. Right now, they are going through their first shed. They will continue to shed as they grow.
Teichroeb plans to keep the one that hatched before her birthday, but will re-home the other two as they become territorial and will need a lot of space.
“It just felt like it was meant to be, my grandma always told us to take care of the turtles,” Teichroeb said, “to not hurt them, and move them off the highway whenever possible.”
Teichroeb had said that 2022 had been a tough year, financially and health wise. Recently, she had gotten into stick-and-poke tattoos and had even done one of a turtle on her ankle.
“It’s one of those things that make me feel good,” she said. “I saved three lives that would otherwise have been left on the side of the road.”
