Holland Cokeley, Penn. Father, Finds Turtle Son Carved Initials Into 47 Years Ago (VIDEO)

One day in 1965, a 13-year-old boy named Jeff Cokeley discovered a box turtle on his family's farm in southwestern Pennsylvania. The youngster carved his initials and date into the turtle's shell and then let it go -- possibly hoping by some hand of fate, he would see the creature again someday.

So when Jeff Cokeley received a phone call and a picture from his father on Friday saying the turtle had been found, he "just started laughing" and "had to show [his] wife," according to the Observer Reporter. His father Holland Cokeley, 85, was walking a dog on his farm when the pooch discovered the turtle and its unmistakeable markings.

"I picked it up, and I thought ‘Oh geez, this is Jeff's turtle!’" Holland Cokeley told KDKA Pittsburgh. "It's been here for 47 years, and it still has the same -- the same -- markings on it."

After taking a picture of the turtle and calling his son in upstate New York, Holland Cokeley kept it around for a couple days and then released it back into the wild, the station reports.

According to the Massachusetts Division Of Fish & Wildlife, the average life expectancy for an Eastern Box Turtle is 40 to 50 years, but they may live to be 100.

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Comments

[Stephen Hopkins]

10:29 PM on 05/08/2012

Parents don´t seem to think twice about circumcising an infant, but that is O.K.

[BabyFister]

01:44 PM on 05/08/2012

I was awful to my cat growing up... from when I was 3 to when I was 5... I feel bad now, but seriously, calm down people.

[enlightened45]

01:14 PM on 05/08/2012

Fools' names often appear in inappropriate places....

[rg9rts]

10:21 AM on 05/08/2012

Etchings, like tats are forever. ~~(^..^)

[WorkhelpWorkhelp]

01:57 AM on 05/08/2012

"And the turtle pulled out a gun and shot him." "Bastard!" he said.

[Conga]

12:34 AM on 05/08/2012

From William Belzer:
In the West Tisbury woods of Martha’s Vineyard island, Massachusetts, USA, there lived (and probably still lives) a female eastern box turtle over 150 years of age. Her shell bore carved initials and dates from 1861, 1881, 1932 and 1955. In the 19th & early-20th centuries it was a common, but ignorant, notion that a turtle’s shell was an inert sheathe, not the living layers of dermal and epithelial structures (akin to our finger’s nail bed) that it actually is. Carving initials into box turtle shells was a common practice, mistakenly assumed to be painless and harmless to the turtle.

[Conga]

12:43 AM on 05/08/2012

The repeatedly-inscribed West Tisbury box turtle was seen by Tom Hodgson (pers. comm.) in 2006 and photographed. Seventeen years earlier, in 1989, his (then, 9-year-old) daughter, Lucy, had seen and photographed it. A 1989 article (Lovewell, 1989) in the Vineyard Gazette (a Martha’s Vineyard newspaper) featured photographs and interviews with Lucy, local historians, and the (then, 57-year-old) man who had carved the 1932 initials. When Lovewell wrote his article, he was unaware that 57 years earlier his newspaper had published an article (Anonymous, 1932) about this same turtle. That 1932 investigation included an interview with the man who carved the 1881 initials when he was 14 years old, and whose family had known two of the young men who, just before going off to die in the U.S. Civil War, carved two of the several sets of 1861 initials and dates. The female was already an adult when those dates were carved in 1861. By the early twenty-first century, various amateur historians (including Tom Hodgson) had compared the 1932 and 1989 photographs, interviewed people linked to the initials, and authenticated the evidence for this turtle’s long life.

[KIVPossum]

03:13 AM on 05/08/2012

Very interesting. Thanks

[Soldier79]

11:29 PM on 05/07/2012

Relax people the carving happened by a child back in 1965. True i would never carve anything into my pet turtle Tank. Times have change quite a bit over the years.

[DanEboi]

11:43 AM on 05/08/2012

"Times have changed quite a bit over the years.". Priceless!

[Soldier79]

03:42 PM on 05/08/2012

Heh, ok it sounded better in my head.

[gesundheit1000]

09:26 PM on 05/07/2012

If this is true, I really hope there is a lot more discussion and awareness brought to this. This is the type of thing people should be talking about and getting enraged and fighting to change.

[RevJimIII]

10:28 PM on 05/07/2012

Enraged? Fighting to change what?

[Conga]

12:11 AM on 05/08/2012

Huh?

This happened 47 years ago, just what or who should we be getting enraged about and fighting? A 60 year old man who did it as a kid and probably isn't still doing it?

As I noted earlier, I remember reading about researchers that used to carve into turtle shells to mark them and keep track of, they don't anymore and I doubt there will be a new epidemic any time soon. People, at times, can be taught!

[dragonet2]

06:04 PM on 05/07/2012

Tortoises can move relatively fast if they are intent on going somewhere. My father had one that would take one bite out of each of the ripest tomatoes. He removed it 30-40 miles south a couple times and just thought maybe a different tortoise had filled the gap. Last time (before he gave up and figured out letting then have the low-hanging fruit was easier) he got a bottle of mom's fingernail polish, put his initials and date on the shell. And did the same-distance move. Tortoise was back in two weeks time.

[Conga]

12:18 AM on 05/08/2012

Way cool, thanks for the info. I had no idea they could do that. I know that bears that they tried to relocate could come back home even taken over 100 miles away but had no idea that any of the reptiles had that much of a homing sense. Again, many thanks.

[rg9rts]

10:25 AM on 05/08/2012

A homing tortise!~~(^..^)

[Gerald OHare]

05:37 PM on 05/07/2012

How long do box turtles live??? When I was a kid we found box turtles all the time but didn't harm them.

[orangesunshine]

05:53 PM on 05/07/2012

Not sure about turtles, but my uant had a tortoise at her home when I was four. we inherited it when I was around twenty three. He would dig a hole under a bush for the winter and come out in the spring Life spans can get up to 100 years or more under the right conditions. He had a hole drilled on the lower tip of his shell near the tail to mark him as an owned pet, because tortoises are protected.

[Gerald OHare]

06:17 PM on 05/07/2012

Very cool.

[dansss8128]

05:30 PM on 05/07/2012

Gotta love the greeny liberal tree hugging anti everything human crowd. Guess what sweet little libbies? Nature is not Bambi. That turtle is a tough little guy ( or girl) who's shell is made to stand up to all kinds of predators.
I am absolutely positive that the turtle in question does not go to his therapist every week to work out his issues about the initials on his shell.

[RedBirdy]

07:13 AM on 05/08/2012

so you have to be liberal and a tree hugger to care about nature. oh, i was wondering what ELSE separated me from the gop.

[rg9rts]

10:28 AM on 05/08/2012

How about intelligence for one, compassion for another,and on and on...~~(^..^)

[GarrettHood1]

05:22 PM on 05/07/2012

...carve CONGRATULATIONS in Jeff Cokeley's chest! 47 years ago, the turtle had to be a juvenile with a yet still soft shell. Who's to say how deep the cuts went especially on such a young turtle. Box turtles are so small when young and the shells are pliable. There is little space between shell and internal organs.

[Eric Graff]

05:20 PM on 05/07/2012

Very cool...........

[Conga]

05:19 PM on 05/07/2012

I wonder if several years down the road the son or grandson of the carver will one day find the turtle and see his Dad's carving?

I know this sounds awful to a lot but back then I can easily see it happening, it was believed they couldn't feel pain if the shell was carved. I've heard of other instances of this from earlier decades to nowadays. If I'm not mistaken researchers also did this in their studies.

[count4eternity]

05:15 PM on 05/07/2012

I thought this was going to be like a slow-mo version of "Lassie, Come Home.!" That would be cool. "For the love of Timmy, turtle crawls 1500 miles...."