Cooter1- Miss Bigness
25 Jun 2005: Miss Bigness is a 9 pound 4 ounce Cooter. She was found hit on the side of a road in the Houston area about 2 weeks ago. Her external damage was only moderate but she had some internal damage because she was bleeding from her mouth and "gurgled" when you picked her up. In a case like this we never know how serious the internal injuries are and just hope for the best. Usually if a turtle survives the first day or two, it's going to make it. Miss Bigness was started on an injectable antibiotic to prevent infection due to the blood in her lungs. She is now no longer gurgling.
She has a hairline crack down the middle of her carapace and a large chip out of the front margin. Her front left leg tissues have lacerations on the back side. She has chipping around her rear margins and about a half inch of her tail was fractured and only hanging by tissues. The fractured portion had to be cut off.
Three days ago a temporary patch was put over the carapace hairline crack. Miss Bigness is carrying eggs (felt upon palpation of her abdomen in the rear leg socket). The patch will keep dirt out of the deep crack while she is in her pen that has access to dirt for her to lay her eggs in. She also has water access in her pen. She hasn't eaten yet which isn't unusual for a turtle needing to lay eggs.
If all continues to go well, Miss Bigness should be releasable by the end of this Summer. We will keep you posted.
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2 Jul 2005: Miss Bigness started eating a few days ago. She has eaten romaine lettuce, yellow squash and native coontail, an aquatic plant from Armand Bayou. From my neighbors tree, a bird dropped a fig into Miss Bignesses pond so she ate that snack too. Her foot lacerations are looking better.
Towards the end of July Miss Bigness started dropping eggs in her pen for a total of 7. The eggs were buried in the pen by the rehabber so we'll see if they hatch.
19 Aug 2005: Miss Bigness was released today! Her patch was removed and the area looked very good. Her foot lacerations healed nicely. When she was released she kept surfacing and looking back at her rehabber as if she couldn't believe she was free again. Haven't seen any baby cooters in the pen yet. Maybe so late in the season they will stay underground for the winter and come out in Spring?