A tiny turtle raised at a Massachusetts zoo was released into the wild in 2011 and disappeared from researchers for 12 years — she resurfaced as a healthy adult, laid her own eggs, and now two of her offspring have been released into the same refuge

Fish and Wildlife Service recounted, a female Blanding’s turtle climbed out of the wetlands at Great Meadows National Wildlife Refuge in Concord, Massachusetts, walked more than a mile, and laid her eggs in the landscaping of a nearby office park. In its species account for Chelonian Research Monographs, the IUCN Tortoise and Freshwater Turtle Specialist Group puts sexual maturity at fourteen to twenty-one years, with individuals living past seventy-five and still breeding. A mark-recapture study at the Assabet River refuge, a separate Massachusetts reintroduction site, found first-year survival among headstarted hatchlings running nearly six times higher than among hatchlings released straight after hatching.