After nearly 50 years cooped up inside, Rockalina the turtle finds the great outdoors

Garden State Tortoise founder Chris Leone gets plenty of requests to take in turtles people can no longer care for. Rockalina’s case was different.

“Like we do in any rescue, we ask to see the photos … And they sent us the photos, and my wife and I, our jaws hit the ground,” he told NPR.

A young boy found Rockalina, a wild eastern box turtle, while playing near his New York home in 1977. His family took her in and for nearly 50 years, she stayed there. She remained on a slick kitchen floor, eating cat food and occasionally lettuce. The environment wasn’t like anything she knew in the wild, where she would have lived near water, basked in sunlight and worn her nails down naturally in forest terrain, Leone says.

When Garden State Tortoise, a reptile rehabilitation center based in New Jersey, got ahold of Rockalina in February, they worried for her survival. Her skin was discolored and sloughing off. Her nails were curled and misshapen, and had even started to grow back into her feet. One leg was in particularly bad shape, and the center worried she would lose it. Her eyes were covered in dead skin, and she couldn’t see.

Leone posted a video about her to his social media channels, showing viewers her dire condition, and worried that her story could end in tragedy.

“We felt we’re going to lose her,” Leone said. “I mean, right away it was like, ‘I don’t know about this one.’ She can’t even see.” But they took her back to the rehab center and got her in a warm bath to soak, and her recovery began.

“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?’ ” Leone said.

The eastern box turtle

Rockalina is an eastern box turtle. The brightly colored reptiles were once plentiful throughout parts of the East Coast, scampering around ponds and into people’s backyards. But their numbers have dwindled, thanks to habitat loss, vehicle strikes and people taking them in as pets, according to the National Park Service. Smuggling is also an ongoing problem for the animals, who have been found in illegal shipments to Asia by the dozen.

They are known as box turtles because they can almost completely shut themselves up inside their shells. They live up and down the Eastern seaboard from Maine to Florida, and and as far west as Texas. They can live to be over 100 years old, according to the Smithsonian National Zoo.

It was a box turtle that inspired Leone to start his reptile center.

“I was five. I was playing in my sandbox with my GI Joes, and my dad was mowing the lawn, and he found a box turtle,” Leone said.

“He could have handed me anything that day, but it was a box turtle and that stuck with me. So I just became enamored with them,” Leone said.

Rockalina’s recovery

From that initial revitalizing soak, Rockalina has made steady progress. Leone and the rescue center’s vet gave her an antibiotic in case of infection, fed her soft foods and trimmed her nails and beak, which is shaped more like a duck’s than a turtle’s hooked mouth because of her living conditions.

“It was like this turtle seems to know we’re helping her, because every single step of the way that we did something, she immediately responded to it,” said Leone.

She was moved into a habitat that mimicked her natural ecosystem, decked out with fake logs, a water area, pine needles and foliage. Finally, in late April, she went outside for the first time in nearly 50 years.

“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,” Leone said.

Rockalina’s natural instincts kicked in, and she munched on an earthworm — a promising sign to Leone.

“It’s just one of those moments that unfortunately in today’s world are rare, where you’re like, “We really actually have a happy ending here,’ ” he said.

Rockalina’s future

It has been less than three months since Rockalina was taken in. And despite all her progress, she still has plenty of healing ahead of her.

Leone says the back leg they worried about is undersized, but mending. She’ll never look exactly like a wild eastern box turtle, her beak will always be misshapen and her color likely never return to what it was in the wild.

Leone plans to build her an outdoor enclosure and keep showing her progress on social media, where many have remained invested in the fate of the scrappy reptile.

“There’s still a lot more to her story that we’re going to tell,” Leone said.