How this injured turtle travelled from Dryden to Sudbury

Alison Bezubiak recently saw a post on social media she couldn't ignore.

Bezubiak, a former turtle rescue volunteer, saw a post about a Dryden couple who had rescued a Western Painted Turtle that had been hit by a vehicle.

"The back end of the shell had been run over," she said.

"But the rest of her was pretty well intact.

Despite being intact, the turtle needed medical attention in Sudbury. The challenge? How to get the reptile to the Turtle Pond Wildlife Centre in Sudbury more than 1,300 kilometres away.

Bezubiak happens to work for an aviation company, but scheduling wouldn't allow for the turtle to catch a flight to Sudbury.

But then, she remembered one of her co-workers, John Nagy, was getting ready to hit the road to southern Ontario.

"He didn't even hesitate," she said.

"It was like it was the most perfectly normal thing anyone could ask."

Nagy's truck was in Geraldton, but he had no problem taking the turtle on the flight and then in his truck.

However, Nagy's trip took longer than expected as his truck broke down outside of Timmins.

"He ended up taking a turtle to a hotel for a night," she said.

Eventually, he got back on the road with the turtle and dropped her off in Sudbury with a volunteer named Judy who took her to the Turtle Pond Wildlife Centre.

Bezubiak recently got an update that the turtle is doing well. She says the plan is to eventually release the turtle back into the wild in the Dryden area.

"Any native species that's injured and rehabilitated has to be released back where it came from," she said.

As for how the turtle will return to the northwest, Bezubiak says she has at least one idea.

"He doesn't know this but my brother is going to be driving from southern Ontario to B.C. at some point this summer," she said.

"If she's rehabilitated and able to go at that point, I might just volunteer him."