In article . net,
Paul Herber writes:
On Sun, 16 Sep 2007 23:52:49 +0100, dave
wrote:

Her-indoors (who hardly ever is btw), came back from an early morning
walk Sat. with the following story.

Walking by the canal I heard a "plop" sound is if someone had thrown
something inthe water. Looked where it came from and (believe me folks
this is what she said), there was a turtle (tortoise?) swimming there!

I know this is way OT for this NG but as many knowledgable folk live
here, I just wanted to ask can these creatures live ok/long in canal
water? I guess it may be a pet someone just dumped in there. Anyway,
it seemed (I'm told) quote happy and was swimming about ok
occasionally coming to the surface - hence the plopping noise.

otoh global warming could be spreading more quickly that we know.

probably a terrapin, unwanted pets get dumped in rivers and canals.

I used to work in an office which ran along a small stream.
We used to see the odd one. As you say, they're pets which
have been discarded (or escaped). They can't currently breed
in the wild as it's too cold for their eggs to survive. If
global warming gets the UK back to the temperature it used
to be, then they will become native as they once were.

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]