After nearly 50 years cooped up inside, Rockalina the turtle finds the great outdoors
JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
An eastern box turtle could fit in your palm. The yellow-speckled reptiles were once plentiful along the East Coast, and some people took them in as pets. That was the fate of a turtle named Rockalina back in 1977. For nearly 50 years, she lived in a New York home, eating cat food and occasionally lettuce.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Is she in good shape?
CHRIS LEONE: I'm going to be honest with you. No.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Chris Leone runs a reptile rehab center in New Jersey called Garden State Tortoise. He met Rockalina in February and started posting videos of her online.
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LEONE: Her beak is a mess, and you can see what has happened to her nails here. They are completely upturned.
SHAPIRO: Her once bright-yellow skin was discolored, and dead skin covered her eyes so she couldn't see.
LEONE: We thought were going to lose her. I mean, right away, it was, like, I don't know about this one.
SUMMERS: At the rehab center, they pampered Rockalina and gave her a warm bath.
LEONE: Within 45 to 50 minutes of her being in warm water, her eyes opened. And you could tell that she was just like, where am I? What's going on?
SUMMERS: They gave her an antibiotic, fed her soft foods and trimmed her nails and beak.
LEONE: Every single step of the way that we did something, she immediately responded to it.
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LEONE: All right. Here she is, guys. Little Rockalina.
SHAPIRO: Finally, this month, the turtle ventured outside for the first time in decades.
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LEONE: Oh, my gosh. Look at her walking on that back foot, too.
She was like, what is this, this soft grass, and perking up and staring up into the sky and cocking her head, blinking her eyes.
SHAPIRO: And then Rockalina's instincts kicked in, and she munched on an earthworm...
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LEONE: She's snapping at it. She's snapping at it.
SHAPIRO: ...Which Leone says is a promising sign.
LEONE: It's just one of those moments where you're like, man, we really actually have a happy ending here.
SUMMERS: But things aren't over for Rockalina just yet. Some eastern box turtles - they live more than 100 years, so she could still have decades to go. Leone plans to build her a pen outside, and he says he'll keep posting about her life to document the comeback of this scrappy little reptile.
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