This is a true story told by my favorite teacher. The professor that took us turtle rescuing.
This story might make you cringe. but it will teach you a lesson on how to NOT rescue an animal.



So There was 2 turtles.
And there were some people.

Them people, they saw one of the turtles seemed to have giant leeches attached on him. Being oh-so good people. They wanted to help.
They tried to pull them off. However, no matter how hard they try, they won't come off.

Desperate, one of the people grabbed a pair of scissors...
And cut the leeches in half.

But the leeches still won't come off, and it started bleeding tremendously, assuming that it's the blood from the turtle, they're afraid that the turtle might bleed to death. So they rushed the turtle to the vet.


As the turtle reached the vet, my teacher and her team immediately cringed at the sight of the poor unfortunate turtle, for what had been cut off were not leeches. They were his hemipenes. That's an equivalent to human's penis. Only reptiles have 2 of them. (And anatomically different, but that's not the point of this story.)

Turtles' hemipenes are normally hidden inside their body and will only show when the turtle is about to copulate (or has some diseases...) . Because the people have never seen them before, they mistook them as leeches.

My teacher's team stitched his wound up. And do their vet stuff. (I wasn't told about what she did exactly.) The scissor guy was very sorry, but it's too late to do anything. And the turtle returned to his home.


Double unfortunately, the female turtle wasn't very happy about what happened to her mate.

And he had to returned to the vet again in the next day because he was bitten.

New wound, same organ.











The lesson from this story?
If you're not absolutely sure that you know what you're doing. DON'T DO ANYTHING. Just take the animal to the vet. especially when your ideas involve using some sharp things on animals.