Turtle

Let us pause for a moment to praise the mighty bog turtle. Reviled, driven almost to extinction, its habitat drained of life and nearly paved over, the Mid-Atlantic bog turtle is finally getting a chance to fight back. And, in so doing, it is helping us save the distinctive, valuable wetlands that are its habitat and are crucial to our East Coast ecology. As Inquirer writer Sandy Bauers noted Sunday, the bog turtle, plagued by development and by poachers who sell individual turtles at a profit, has now been accorded a spot on the federal endangered-species list.

Call it the Case of the Missing Carp and Turtle. Or the Chinatown Caper. "The carp and turtle mysteriously abandoned at the Daily Fresh Seafood House now have mysteriously disappeared," reported Leonard Knox, an anti- cruelty agent with the Pennsylvania SPCA. The only evidence remaining today is the 40-gallon aquarium that the creatures once called home. It's still standing behind the front plate-glass window of the Chinese restaurant on 11th Street near Race. Knox said he last saw the pair about 12:30 p.m. yesterday while visiting nearby Chinese-operated businesses in hopes of locating the owners of the shuttered restaurant.

A trio of doctors from Baltimore attending a local conference witness the first gushes of the Swann Memorial Fountain, reactivated with the advent of spring. The fountain at Logan Square, 18th Street and Benjamin Franklin Parkway, received a privately funded, $2 million restoration that was completed last summer after a much longer dry spell dating to 1989.

Even if Marc Young didn't have all the right moves his freshman year, he had seen the right movie. Young, now a senior at the Haverford School, was stretching with his lacrosse teammates three years ago. The guys were talking about movies, and North Shore, an obscure 1987 surfing film, came up. Young was one of the only team members who had seen it, and he was promptly nicknamed "Turtle," after one of the characters. "I wasn't incredibly fast, but I wasn't a real turtle," Young said with a laugh.

Pert, pretty, 20ish, and very naive, the actress Sally Middleton is describing the producer with whom she has just had an affair. "Well, he's terribly nice," she says. "And young, and attractive. At least, I guess he's around forty, but he seemed young. " I quote this line, which occurs early in John van Druten's 1943 comedy The Voice of the Turtle, because it suggests the kind of gentle humor that kept the show's original production on the boards for 1,557 performances - the ninth longest nonmusical run in Broadway history.

Kellye the turtle has created quite a stir at Martin's Aquarium in Jenkintown. Since Martin's - which is known for the unusual reptiles, birds and fish it sells - announced almost two weeks ago that it had the freakish two-headed turtle, the store has been crawling with more than its own merchandise. The curious have come to gape and marvel. There has been area-wide television coverage. Articles have been printed in newspapers from California to Florida. Late Night With David Letterman may be interested in having Kellye appear as a guest, said Joel Martin, a co-owner of the store.

Someone has taken off with Kellye, the two-headed turtle with an extra leg, two extra feet, an appetite for live goldfish and no known gender. Yesterday, Kellye's owners at Martin's Aquarium in Jenkintown issued a public plea to whoever kidnapped the freakish turtle they say they treat like their own child: Keep him/her/them warm and wet, and please, remember the live goldfish. "It has to have that," said Deborah Brown, an assistant to owner Joel Martin, "or it will die. " Kellye, who hails from Nashville, Tenn.

Sex. Drama. Mystery and intrigue. They were all there last week at Springton Manor Farm as more than 150 students from 40 schools competed in the fourth annual Eco-Meet - a two-day event in which kids show off their knowledge about the environment. How do you tell the sex of a turtle? Give me a 90-second show on wetlands! What is that redheaded bird on the blood-stained scrap of paper? Who gobbles whom in the food chain? "You can tell the sex of a turtle by its eyes," eighth grader Karen Sieger said.

Neighbors of the proposed Longwood Village shopping center in East Marlborough say the 33-acre site is home to a red-tailed hawk, woodcocks, foxes, groundhogs, and, possibly, the endangered Pennsylvania bog turtle. The neighbors have rallied around the bog turtle, hoping the elusive creature might prove to be to Longwood Village what the snail darter was to a proposed dam in Tennessee. Dr. Steven M. Jones, an ecologist, confirmed that the tract north of Route 1, between Schoolhouse and Bayard Roads, provides wetland habitat for a variety of wildlife and that the area could contain bog turtles.

  Step one was to heave the 65 million-year-old fossil out of the ground - a job that taxed the muscles of seven sweaty men. Step two: Clear away several hundred pounds of surrounding plaster and wet, sandy muck. Step three, currently under way in a Drexel University laboratory, is a task for finer motor skills: a prehistoric jigsaw puzzle. The fossil is the shell of a big sea turtle called Taphrosphys sulcatus , which broke into hundreds of pieces during the eons that it lay buried in what is now near Sewell, Gloucester County.

A Burlington County farmer who damaged the habitat of a federally protected turtle species by clearing several rows of trees on his 140-acre North Hanover Township farm was sentenced in federal court Tuesday to a year's probation. James Durr, who is deputy mayor of the township, pleaded guilty in January to harassing endangered bog turtles in 2005. He removed the trees along Turtle Creek, upland from the habitat, and didn't think his actions would affect the turtles, he said.

A Burlington County farmer, one of the largest producers of cut flowers on the East Coast, has pleaded guilty to a federal charge of harassing endangered bog turtles by causing damage to their habitat. James Durr, deputy mayor of North Hanover Township, acknowledged this month that he cleared several rows of trees on his 140-acre North Hanover farm in 2005, causing soil erosion that may have affected the muddy area where the tiny orange-eared turtles had been known to live.

  Step one was to heave the 65 million-year-old fossil out of the ground - a job that taxed the muscles of seven sweaty men. Step two: Clear away several hundred pounds of surrounding plaster and wet, sandy muck. Step three, currently under way in a Drexel University laboratory, is a task for finer motor skills: a prehistoric jigsaw puzzle. The fossil is the shell of a big sea turtle called Taphrosphys sulcatus , which broke into hundreds of pieces during the eons that it lay buried in what is now near Sewell, Gloucester County.

Q: My wife and I are both approaching 60. Ten years ago, she had back surgery, but it hasn't limited her activity level. For example, she can still ride her horse two or three times weekly. But if I try to touch her, she pulls into a turtle position. When I asked if there wss a problem, she said she'd never be able to have sex after the surgery. And here I sit, bewildered, with how many more years of bliss ahead of me? Steve: You've never tried the turtle position? Mia: When's the last time you gave her a leisurely back massage?

A Camden man sought in two recent killings in New Jersey and Pennsylvania was arraigned on the New Jersey charge Monday. Laurie Wint, 23, also known as "Lance" and "Turtle," shot and killed Kevin Miller, 19, of Camden, on June 8 in Eutaw Park in Camden after the two argued over a woman, the Camden County Prosecutor's Office said. On July 24, Wint stabbed to death Tyrone Newman, 33, of Warminster, in a Warminster apartment, Bucks County authorities said. Charges including homicide and aggravated assault are pending, officials said.

INQUIRER STAFF WRITER Shell-shocked doesn't begin to describe the last 14 months in the life of Thomas the turtle. The odyssey includes the injured 20-pound reptile, a rock-DJ icon at WMMR-FM (93.3), an ex-76er, and a wildlife rehabilitation center in Roxborough. They were brought together on the night of May 25, 2010, when the snapping turtle tried to cross Route 23 near Conshohocken and was hit by a car. That night, the disc jockey - Pierre Robert - saved its life. On Wednesday, they were reunited to celebrate Thomas' recovery and its return to the wilds of Gladwyne.

There is only a turtle. The turtle weighs 1,800 pounds. She is half the size of a Volkswagen, and her formal Latin name is Dermochelys coriacea . My endangered leatherback has come 3,000 miles from the cold waters of Nova Scotia to a remote part of the island of St. Croix, in the Caribbean, to drop 142 glistening eggs in the dark of night into a nest like the one from which she hatched, about 40 years ago, presumably on this very beach....

The group of scientists had plenty of brainpower, able to identify a prehistoric shark tooth or a crocodile jaw with a casual glance. But when you get right down to it - down being the operative word - paleontology is sometimes a matter of muscles. Squatting in a muddy Gloucester County mine pit Wednesday afternoon, seven strong men grunted and strained and heaved until they managed to lift up their prize: a 65 million-year-old sea turtle. "It's beautiful," said a weary, dirt-caked Ken Lacovara, an associate professor of biology at Drexel University.