Sandy, the turtle (tortoise)

The other day we found a turtle (actually, we were informed by our older and wiser 10 yr old nieghbor that it was a tortoise, since it had clawed feet instead of webbed feet!) He was walking (rather fast for a tortoise) down the sidewalk and headed for the street. Austin came running in the house to tell us and before even thinking about it, Annah Grace picked it up to rescue it. It was nice - peeking out of it shell each time you let it down to walk around. We decide to make it a little habitat and hold onto it until our neighbors got home ( we think it might be the same one they spotted a few days before!) So, we got out the cooler, stole some sand from our builder and put in some leaves and water. The kids named him Sandy. We took care of him for a couple of hours and when our neighbors got home, we took him down to the creek to let him go. He ended up not really liking the sanctuary we had built for him and tried desperately to escape. Then, the kids decided to wash his shell before we sent him on his way and that irritated him even more! Surely, had he been a snapping turtle, we would have been injured by this point. Sandy kept sticking his head out of his shell and opening his mouth wide and looking around like "will you people please leave me alone!" So we put him in the back of the wagon and headed toward the creek - it was a pretty bumpy ride!
Well, he was released back into the wild with scores of vegetation to snack on and rocky, sandy soil to climb. We made sure to get totally soaked in the creek before returning home. After all, it's not every day you find a turtle!