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The Weird History of Basement Turtles
It’s a St. Louis thing
There are many things that have baffled and amused me since moving to America. The endless election cycles, free refills that arrive after I’ve barely taken a sip of my original drink, and flags, flags everywhere. Keeping basement turtles, however, is one of those quirky activities that are so weird, so out of the left-field, and so utterly American — it’s delightful.
So the story goes, old houses with dirt basements and subfloors would suffer from encroaching pests. Box turtles (chiefly Terrapene carolina) were an ideal natural solution. They’re common around the fields and rivers of Missouri, are land-based, and eat insects. A bowl of water and a handful of greens are the only other things they need. In the winter, when bug populations dwindle, the turtles hibernate, waking again to resume their work in the spring.
Anecdotal evidence¹ shows basement turtles were common across the St. Louis area from at least the 1930s through the ’80s. Some might even exist to this day. Usually, the turtles were wild-caught. Others came from carnivals or were found injured in the road. Some simply got in and claimed the basements as their own.
