This past week I showed a house on Tortoise Island. Tortoise Island is located in Satellite Beach in the Banana River here in Brevard County. It is an absolutely gorgeous, private island with most homes having a dock right in their back yard.
The home that I was showing was vacant, so the Buyers and I made our way through the home out to the backyard where there is a screened in private pool that sits right on a lovely, quiet canal.
As we walked out onto the pool deck I noticed that the skimmer lid was open. As I walked past the open skimmer I looked down and got a real surprise. There in the skimmer basket sat a very unhappy looking red eared slider tortoise. He was a good sized boy and obviously had been cruising across the pool deck when he fell into the open skimmer hole. Thankfully he fell in butt first or he would have drowned!
The poor little reptile looked up at me forlornly. The part of his carapace that was above the water line had a white sediment on it. I figured it was chlorine that had dried on his shell. I reached down and tapped him on his back and he immediately pulled himself inside his shell. Then, I gently took ahold of him and wiggled him out of the skimmer basket. I carried him out of the pool deck and but him down on the grass of the backyard. Because I volunteer with the Sea Turtle Preservation Society, I called in to find out what, if anything that I should do with my new little friend. I didn't get an immediate answer and the tortoise just sat there looking at me.
A couple of minutes later I got a return call and walked back to where I had put the big guy down. He had disappeared! We took that as a good sign that he had high tailed it back to the canal.
Good luck my little friend. Watch out for pools with open skimmer lids in the future.
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