I live in the Dallas Fort-Worth metroplex and over the past week there has been considerably strong rain, wind, and thunder storms. My home is in a residential neighborhood and is about 1 mile from the nearest natural body of water, which is a small creek.
Two days ago, I decided that I'd better clean out the pool's skimmer and filters, as they'd most likely be packed with debree due to the storms. To my surprise, upon opening up the skimmer lid, I saw a half-dollar coin sized turtle trying its best to not get sucked down into the vortex created by the skimmer's doward suction through the filter. I immediately turned off the pool's pump and prepared an old fish tank for the little turtle. I've never owned a turtle before, so I Google'd to get info and here I am.
My question to you all is this. How did a half dollar sized turtle end up in my pool? My pool is heavily chlorinated, so how did that not kill the turtle? How long could he have been swimming without drowning due to not being able to exit the water?
I find it hard to believe that a small little turtle would have walked 1 mile, uphill, across streets, and through a residential neighborhood and then under my backyard fence in order to plop himself into my pool. Do birds every grab these little guys and take them into the air? Could a tornado have sucked him into the sky, only to have him fall down into my pool? There were much larger and heavier objects thrown into my pool, from some unknown origin, by the storm's winds. So my guess is that the little turtle flew his way into my pool. Has anything like this ever happened to anybody else?
If there were strong winds and rain, perhaps he was partly washed that distance. However, I think it's more likely that he hatched from a nest that wasn't as far away as the creek. The female had probably left the creek to dig a nest and lay eggs (and they can do some walking to find a spot that they find suitable).
(you won't be able to tell until it get's bigger unfortunately)
