When I read up on box turtles, being so excited by Clarks diagnosis, I found no mention of their crashing numbers- I didn’t look that far but wiki usually includes that kind of info. When I found a box turtle on my property 20 years ago in SE NY my neighbor suggested it was an endangered species. I placed it in my veg garden in hopes it would eat slugs. Although the garden was encircled with a 3’ 1" chicken wire fence (in addition to 7’ deer fence) I never saw that or any other box turtle on my land, or any other land where I work again. I’m outdoors constantly in my work and many orchards I manage are adjacent to woods so they apparently are quite rare here.
Gosh, if the expert’s indicators let them down, what hope is there for the rest of us?
Got all psyched about trying to grow watermelon next year…well…gonna need some tried and true indicators of ripeness by the end of the season guys.
I hope you are more thorough in your fruit tree research! 
You said you found no mentioned of their crashing numbers in wiki. The 3rd paragraph in the wiki entry on eastern box turtles (the ones mentioned in my thread) specifically tells how they are in sharp decline “as much as 32% in the last 3 generations” and spoke of how one conservation group moved them from “near threatened” to “vulnerable” because of their rapid decline. There is also a chart on the wiki page showing how they have declined in classification due to the dramatic decrease in population.
Furthermore, an elementary google search using nothing more complicated than “american box turtle decline” brings thousands of excellent articles from sources like New York Times, several state wildlife departments, zoology publications, all the way down to City Government programs like Houston TX which are trying to stop the box turtle from completely disappearing.
Of course its not important to fruit growing and I know you didn’t do a lot of research, but I didn’t want you or others to think I was just crazy! They are most definitely in decline in my area, But I’ll be the first to say that has nothing to do with growing fruit and so probably shouldn’t even be debated here. Sorry for chasing a rabbit trail.
When I was a kid, it was common to find a box turtle in our back
yard or in the woods somewhere, but I can’t remember the last time
I’ve seen one. I used to have one as a pet. Now the only turtles I ever
see are the soft shell water turtles.
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Since the watermelon talk has meandered into box turtle talk mixed with a bit of reminiscing, I’ll wander down that path, too.
When I was young in Virginia, the best box turtle finding weather was at the end of a summer rain when they would claim the steamy country roads as their personal saunas. Everyone knew to take care and watch for turtles after a rain.
I have box turtles here. They probably live in my wooded area. I don’t see them often. Only once or twice a year. They can’t resist strawberries, like to munch tomatoes, and probably a juicy earthworm now and again.
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This interesting. I did that one year with North Carolina Cross. Everyday it seemed to visual get larger and larger. To prove I wasn’t going crazy, I started measuring it every day and recording the width and length. Turns out, I wasn’t going crazy. every day I was recording between 1/2 to and inch of growth (most days). Once growth slowed; I picked it. I will keep looking for the data and photos of the final melon. It was about 3 or 4 seasons back so I can’t remember the end weight but I remember it was by far the largest melon I’ve ever grown.
Today I set out my wildlife camera. The grass is high so I’m not sure if I will capture something or not. But, one thing i’m confident in is that it’s not turtles. My patch is in the middle of my backyard. in other words, there is plenty of low cut grass surrounding my patch. Over the last 5 days, I’ve seen new damage each day. I think there is no way a turtle is visiting daily and I’m not visually seeing them. It’s a fair guess but I just don’t think is physically possible if you look at were the patch is in relation to the daily distance a turtle would be traveling. Also, my brother just down the road from me just confirmed that he has seen the exact same damage in his patch!
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Turtles are the only thing I’ve seen make those holes. We have lots of box turtles here. Sometimes I get 20-30 coming to my place for food. I try to relocate them away from melons and close to blackberries or wild cherry etc so no harm is done. I drove one a few miles away once and dropped him off but by that evening he was home. The family and I laughed because I marked his shell before I got rid of him. We did not expect him back that quick. There is lots of fruit here so they like it here. Another thing I’ve seen make small holes like that to get food are mice but I’ve never seen them attack melons.
Found some information on the web that is leaning me towards raccoons as being the culprit. If this is the case, hopefully my camera will catch them. But, we had a lot of rain over the weekend and today so this might be the result of an animal in desperate search of hydration.
I didn’t even need to read your link to feel certain it is not raccoons. They are high metabolism animals with huge appetites. One raccoon would likely eat half a watermelon in a sitting and leave you a large road apple as a compliment.
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Here are two pictures of the musk melon end of my melon patch. The first is a wide angle shot and everything looks pretty good. The second is a close up of a very rough looking vine.
Any idea what caused it?
The clisest vine is Ambrosia which looks good. The hurting looking vine is Collective Farm Woman. I used to be able to grow them great but lately they’ve not been doing well
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to my untrained eye the last pic could be damage from cucumber beetles, they carry a wilt or some sort something, I had muskmelons look like that before they died last season, produced OK, but was a constant struggle to keep them free of the beetles.
Do you water your melons, if there’s not enough rain?
Ray - yes, I water via soaker hoses.
Moley - you may be on to something. When I was spraying for mildew, there were a lot of little bugs flying around. Is there a way to combat them without killing pollinators?
My melons died every year from bacterial wilt (I think that what is it). The damage looks very similar. It will quickly spread to the other plants and they all wilt. The most frustrating part is that they do it when my melons are close to ripe, but not there yet. This year I covered melon patch with the bug net and I spray with insecticides and use Sevin powder. I see many dead cucumber beetles on the top of the net. Every couple of days I open the net and hand polinate melons. We’ll see if it helps against the bacterial wilt. If not I will officially give up on melons.
Its hard to tell from the photo, but it looks like there might be a grayish, powder looking substance on the remaining green leaves. If so, my money is on Powdery Mildew.
Cityman - some (and hopefully all) of the white spots you see is the dried Daconil that I sprayed to combat PM.
Gotcha. I know the death caused by PM looks similar, but (at least in my garden) there is indeed more silvery powder on the leaves. If it isn’t that, my money (if I have any left after my last guess) is now on bacterial wilt (as mentioned by @Antmary) which is spread by the cucumber beetles mentioned by @Moley. Sometimes it feels like there is no end to the insects and diseases we battle!
This is what my camera caught last night. I placed the camera right next two melons covered by a large washtub. The washtub was pushed off and both melons were damaged in same fashion. I knew then it was a raccoon and this photo proves it.
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I LOVE IT!!! I’d have bet the farm against it being a coon, but I can’t argue with that kind of evidence!!! I’m so glad you resolved the mystery. Now…you gota find a way to stop these guys. They are extremely persistent.
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