Hello, my friends, and welcome to episode 132 of just the zoo of us. On this week's episode, I got to chat with a

truly delightful ecologist who works with an equally delightful endangered freshwater turtle.

We got to talk about what to do if you see a turtle crossing the road, what cartoons get right and

wrong about turtles, the perils of longevity and cute fluffy

predators, and the conservation work that's going into helping our tough-shelled friends.

I promise that by the end you will have a big, beautiful smile, just like the one across the sweet,

smiling faces of this blissful little turtle.

Just the Zoo of Us presents Blandings Turtle with Farusha Widjawardena. Hey everybody, it's Ellen Weatherford.

This is Just the Zoo of Us, your favorite animal review podcast.

And this week, I'm super excited to learn about a really cool critter that I'm not super

familiar with, so I'm ready to learn a lot about.

We have a cool friend here with us today. We'm ready to learn a lot about. We have a cool friend

here with us today. We're talking to Therusha Ouija Wardana. Say hi, Therusha. Hey, Ellen. I'm so

excited to talk to you. This is so exciting. Okay, so we're talking about Blandings Turtle today,

which has been requested multiple times by our friend Britt Vickstrom. But before we talk

about Blanning's Turtle, let's talk about you a little bit. Therusha, can you let our friends

at home know, like, what got you into the work that you're doing with turtles in general?

Yes, absolutely. So the way I got into this work is as a kid I wasn't really that

interested in animals but after I migrated to Canada I got this opportunity to

learn about animals and conservation in my undergrad and that's what really got

me interested and then I got the chance to do a master's degree in conservation work. And

that program was so amazing. And it was also like internship based compared to like a thesis-based

...