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VIRGINIAN PILOT (Hampton Roads, Virginia) 29 August 05 Man is a hero to the half-shelled with Portsmouth haven (Janie Bryant)
Portsmouth: Some people take time to smell the roses. Garland Butler brakes for turtles.
Especially if someone else didn’t.
It’s a habit he got into years ago as a sheriff’s deputy serving papers in the Churchland area. He saw development erasing nature’s habitats, and he saw too many turtles inching along asphalt, oblivious to danger.
“I’d see turtles crossing the road, and I’d just put them on the other side,” he said. “And then one day I kept one.”
He never had a turtle as a boy and didn’t set out to be a rescuer of the shelled creatures. But he’d see them topsy-turvy, their shells cracked or broken where they had been flipped by the wheel of a car.
He started reading about the armored reptiles and the more he learned, the more he cared what happened to them.
People started to bring him injured turtles, too. Sometimes the turtles came to him for rehab after people took them to a veterinarian who knew of his interest.
Before he knew it, Butler was operating a safe haven for turtles in trouble.
When Butler’s family bought a new house in Merrifields, it was the turtles that moved first.
“I had to get their home ready before I could move myself,” he said.
He penned in an area 50 feet by 10 feet in the backyard under the shade of a couple of pine trees, which are surrounded by azaleas and other shrubs. Blackberries and grapes grow in the turtles’ habitat.
There’s a nice carpet of pine straw on the ground, which, during the winter, the turtles dig under to hibernate.
“It’s all natural,” he said.
Except for the turtle-sized wooden shelters he’s built to shade them on hot days.
This morning they come out of their hiding places, seeming to respond to the voice of their caretaker. Butler opens a can of dog food, the pungent odor filling the air.
The turtles will eat just about anything from insects and slugs to fruits and vegetables, he said. But he read somewhere that they’d eat dog food, and he figured that was rich in vitamins.
“And they’re healthy,” he said.
“Come on,” he called out, as he spooned generous portions on several wood blocks around the fenced area. A small group of turtles circled one of the heaps, sharing the feast.
“Now this guy here is the second turtle I’ve ever had,” he said. “I found him upside down on the highway.
“His shell was broken and he was bleeding.”
He lifted a screened box to show newborns the size of a quarter. Nearby he raised a wooden shelter where turtles had been mating.
“I don’t know what’s going on here,” he said as he separated two male turtles ignoring the female nearby. “I think you’re confused, fellow.”
Butler seems to know all of the turtles, including how long he’s had them and how they came under his care.
“They have their own personalities. Some of them are really warm to you,” he said.
“And some clam up and don’t want you messing with them.”
The only one he ever named was a box turtle he calls Lazarus because he seemed to rise from the dead.
“Someone brought him to me, and he was pretty well busted up, but he was still living,” he said.
But by winter, the turtle had not hibernated and didn’t move, so Butler thought he was dead. Still he gave the reptile the benefit of the doubt, burying him just 6 inches in the ground.
That summer a neighbor told him there was a turtle in the road.
“I recognized him because of his injuries,” he said.
Butler has had Lazarus for about 10 years .
He’s had some of his painted turtles just as long.
They splash away in a pond on Butler’s enclosed porch and bask in their own private sun, a 100-watt light bulb radiating off an aluminum shade suspended over the water.
He feeds the painted turtles reptile sticks, and they eat out of his hand. But they’ll also bite the hand feeding them.
Butler’s been bitten a few times, but he doesn’t give the bigger species a chance.
“Somebody called and said, 'I’ve got this thing in my yard. It acts like it wants to bite,’” Butler said. “He was trying to describe it, and I knew what it was.”
He got some heavy duty leather gloves and went to the rescue, giving the snapping turtle a lift to a swampy area.
Now retired, Butler, 58, spent 30 years between the Police Department and the Sheriff’s Office.
He’d like to start doing more volunteer work for the nearby Hoffler Creek Wildlife Preserve.
He remembers when Randi Strutton, the Hoffler Creek Wildlife F oundation’s executive director, and others first spearheaded the movement to save the site from development.
“She saw a vision in it that I didn’t see,” he said. “I saw it as just protecting the land.
“But she saw it as that, plus educating people about the environment.”
Recently he shared his turtle expertise with children at a special program there.
Butler is still working part-time, painting houses. But like his backyard reptilian guests, he’s living life in the slow lane now.
He spends time tinkering with his landscaping projects or whittling patterned walking sticks out of tree limbs.
And taking care of the turtles.
http://home.hamptonroads.com/stories/story.cfm?story=91317&ran=99405