It’s Labor Day, the political (albeit not astrological) last day of summer. Mornings are getting progressively chillier and foggier and waters are getting colder. Around here, the fresh waters also are diminishing due to drought. All that can be uncomfortable if you live in a pond like these September baskers:
The temperatures of painted turtle home waters here are almost certain to drop below 50°(F) in September or early October. That will flip the PT sayonara switches and tell them that it’s time to say “Goodbye cruel world.” They’ll take that last deep dive of the year to enter their winter dormancy until the waters warm in April or March.
PTs swim to the bottoms of their ponds, lakes and slow streams and burrow into the muck there. They don’t “hibernate” in a very deep sleep. They undergo “brumation,” a slowed state of being. They “breathe” oxygen by absorbing it from the water’s molecules. They won’t worry about the mid-term elections above, at least that’s what I’ve been told.
(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on September 5, 2026.) .