Decatur Morgan Hospital this week got a special visitor from the Cook Museum of Natural Science – a sea turtle.

Kale arrived at the hospital on Tuesday for a computed tomography, or CT, scan. The museum’s veterinary staff wanted to get a better look at Kale’s shell.

According to the museum in Decatur, Kale is an endangered Kemp’s ridley sea turtle which came to the Cook Museum in 2020 from the Virginia Aquarium and Marine Science Center, a marine animal rescue facility.

Kemp’s ridley sea turtles are the smallest, rarest and most endangered species of sea turtle in the world.

Kale, while still a juvenile, was hooked in 2019 by a recreational fisherman off a pier on Chesapeake Bay in Virginia. Because of the hook’s size, an endoscopic procedure could not remove it.

Since then, Kale has had several invasive surgeries, creating scar tissue and a hollow space where food and debris can become trapped, potentially causing infections. Because of this, Kale will probably never return to the wild and will require occasional monitoring of his shell.

The museum said the CT is “the best tool to assess the improvement of Kale’s deep infections of his shell.”