It’s been almost five decades since a wild eastern box turtle named Rockalina felt the sun on her face, but the years spent in darkness are finally behind her. After being kept as a pet since 1977, Rockalina has finally been set free, and she’s now living her best life at a New Jersey animal rehabilitation center.
Rockalina has been kept captive since 1977 when a boy playing outside his New York home found her and brought her home with him. His family kept her as a pet for nearly 50 years, where she lived on a tiled kitchen floor, mostly living on cat food and lettuce.
The lack of rough outdoor terrains significantly impacted her health and physical appearance. She had pale skin, overgrown claws, and was missing a tail when she was brought in at the Garden State Tortoise, and its founder Chris Leone was afraid she was beyond recovery.
Luckily, he was wrong, and Rockalina was brought back to life after being placed under a veterinarian’s care, receiving antibiotics and a meal made of soft, mushed-up foods. Leone captured her journey to full recovery on social media and broke the internet with a video that shows her basking in the sun for the first time in decades. He also advised anyone who encounters an eastern box turtle in the wild to leave it where it is, because it’s already home.
