I’ve done something twice in the past month that I would have never done had we not bought a house that backs up to a pond, and Animal Planet’s Ernie Brown, Jr. would be proud.

Ernie Brown, Jr., is from the backwoods of Kentucky and rose to fame on the TV show, Call of the Wildman, and is more commonly referred to as the Turtle Man.

The Turtle Man catches snapper turtles, snacks, raccoons and countless other critters with his bare hands. He often wades into some nasty-looking, murky water and pulls out turtles which he then relocates to a safer location.

His unique yell “Ye, Ye, Ye, Ye… Live Action,” is something Jake and I used to do around the house a couple of years ago when we watched all of the Call of the Wildman episodes.

While I’m not being as adventurous as Turtle Man (I’m not getting into our pond unless someone is drowning) I’ve taken to saving turtles and relocating them to our pond.

The first turtle I rescued was on May 11th. I saw him crossing the road a few miles away from the house. Since it was headed toward a curb and a warehouse, I turned around, picked it up and put it in my floorboard.

Lane the Turtle, didn’t like the transport vehicle so much.

I showed him to Ashlee, who has a turtle as a pet at home, and we made plans to release him in the pond. But before we introduced him to his new home, Ashlee gave him a name, Lane (since he was found in the street).

Lane took a little coaxing to get into the pond.

At this point I didn’t consider myself in the turtle saving business. I’d go out to the pier and throw saltines in the pond and watch the turtles come up to eat them, but that was about it.

Then yesterday afternoon Tammy and I were walking down to get the mail when we spotted another one in the drainage ditch at the front of the house.

We found Ditch the Turtle in our front yard.

I ran to get a box to make his transport to the pond a little easier. Savannah had wandered down to see what all of the commotion was about and checked Ditch out a few seconds.

Savannah didn’t know what to think about Ditch.

I learned from Lane’s struggle to find the water and released Ditch at a different, more open spot of the pond.

Ditch at the water’s edge.

Ditch took a little nudging, but he eventually disappeared with a cloudy splash.

Then this morning as I was driving to work, I saw another BIG turtle on the road out of the neighborhood. I stopped my car and had to make a decision, save the turtle and risk being late to work or continue on my way.

I jumped out, grabbed Curve – I found him just past a curve in the road – put him on the floorboard and headed back to the house.

Curve was sitting just past a curve in the road.

Tammy was about to back out of the garage when she saw me pulling it. I grabbed the Turtle Transport box, loaded up Curve and headed down to the water.

Introducing Curve to the pond.

As I’ve been writing this, I’ve looked up if it’s OK to relocate turtles found in the road or a yard and now I’m not so sure that I’ve been doing a good thing.

The neighborhood is full of small ponds, so I’m hoping my attempts at “saving” them don’t cause more problems. Hopefully I won’t see anymore turtles in the road and only see them popping their head out of the pond to check me out.

Or chilling on a tree branch by the pier like they were doing the other day.

Hopefully the three turtles I put in the pond will be frands with these three.