He's a lucky one.

We've gotten a lot of neglected turtles over the past 2yrs at the RES Q. One turtle had grown INTO her plastic container They have to smash it open to get her out. Last week we got a turtle in a cup, a 6" in a 10 gallon tank, & too many sick ones from outright neglect

In 2 yrs we've rescued well over 300 turtles, most being Red Eared Sliders & other cooters. The 1 water Dragon we got in a couple months ago wasn't able to move its back legs from sever MBD. Marc gave him all kinds of vitamins, & meds, & extra UVA/B in hopes it would survive. Now you can't even tell the little guy was close to death. He's super active & only has 1/2 a dead toe. Austin the guy I'm fostering was in horrible shape too, not as bad as the water dragon, but wasn't far behind. He can walk better, & is earing more. His ribs aren't a solid mass anymore, but his wrists are still bad. I gave him a log to hang out on to help build up strength in his wrists so the tendons can heal faster/better, so he wan walk without pain & with ease.

We almost always have 80 turtles + a few random lizards/snakes/frogs at the rescue, & thats only 1 out of our 5 locations the others are much smaller, but in total there are a hair over 100 unwanted animals at any given time

In a couple weeks we'll be rehoming about 100+ turtles from a different rescue (a friend) that wants to retire from the rescue side of things, & just stick with the Rehabilitation of Native Species. We found someone with a MASSIVE man-made pond that is willing to take them in. He wants more for his massive pond, but we want to give him the turtles in multiple deliveries. So he'll empty the retiring ladies turtles, then next year we'll give him some of ours. We did that with another guy that had a massive man-made pond. It worked out very well. Its also a lot of fun to see the ponds & owners again.

Turtle Rescue is very rewarding, don't you agree?