Turtle Club Med

Western pond turtles live here!

Here is Golden Gardens park, in west Eugene. It’s nearly 200 acres of land, with a mile walking path that weaves around ponds.

This area became ponds after gravel was removed to build freeways. Back then they didn’t demand that gravel businesses restore the land. Instead, they left steep loose banks, thick blackberries, and too many victims of drowning. Over the years, the city has removed blackberries, graded the steep edges, and planted vegetation. They support the ecosystem: water, plants, fish, turtles, birds, people.

It’s a beautiful place to walk, jog, fish, or sit. Nice for dogs too but keep your dog on leash, it’s better for the environmental restoration projects.

The turtles sleep in mud, not just on the bank, but the actual bottom of the lake mud. The story is they can shut down most “operations” and only keep their core circulation going. They become one with the mud, not even needing air. Fantastic meditators. Mud masters. They come up and out when it is sunny and bask on logs. Cedar are preferred. The logs are anchored by cables to give them a stable place to congregate.

I love Eugene’s First Saturday Park walks because it’s like a walk with the elders who tell the story of where we live. It’s much better than google. We all show up, totally random group, and interface with each other and our environment. It’s a great way to connect and learn not from the internet. The internet has few elders. The nature talk leaders are not necessarily elder in age. They are learned. Find the learned and follow.

Back to the turtles, the way it works is the female turtle crawls onto land and picks a spot. She then pees on it to soften the dirt, backs up, and lays eggs. She pats the mud down, and returns to the pond. Predators are onto this, so many don’t make it. However, at Golden Gardens, they have a plan.

The turtle nest guards work well. They are applied right after the eggs are laid. The latest version is keeping out skunks, raccoons, and coyotes.

They also fenced off an acre, a beautiful grassy slope with good sun exposure. The perfect setting for the turtles is the western sun in the southern sky. It sounds poetic, which is why I tell you.

The killdeer now vacation at Turtle Club Med because they noticed it was a nice safe area. Less intruders and egg eaters.

The fish that live here are bass, bluegill, sunfish, and carp. Carp are hard on the vegetation, so they removed about 77 of them last year. They were donated to a local food bank. Some people really like to eat carp.

One last thing, one time a dead goose appeared to be slowly moving around in the middle of the lake. It scared people. Volunteers called to alert the pond caretakers. Turns out the goose, though dead, was moving due to a group of turtles underneath munching on the goose, slowly moving it around the lake. When not sleeping in the mud, they are scavengers and help keep our waterways clean.