From time to time we get a visitor . The one yesterday was a little different from the usual. The first thing was the motorcycle that we thought had hit a ground hog. After the motorcycle left, I went to inspect the body on the the road. It was a snapping turtle, scrunching into his shell on alert by my presence. It looked fine and wasn't hit by the motorcycle at all. They had just stopped to inspect the creature on the road.
I left to return in a few minutes with Husband to show him the snapper. It was gone, but found easily in my most front flowerbed. There we could leisurely give a closer inspection of it. It was, in my guesstimate, about 1 year old and weighed around 5 to 10 pounds. NO, I didn't try to pick the thing up! I've seen much, much bigger snappers. We left it then, getting the impression that it had an appointment somewhere. Husband thought we should trap it and take it back to the frog pond behind my property, but I told him to leave it alone. It could make it's own way. Besides, by moving it, we might not be doing it any favors.
About a half hour later or so, I was working in the garden when there was a ruckus by the neighbors Huskies. Here, the snapper had worked it's way back to the middle of my back garden. I think it was headed for the toad pond about 500 feet from my back property line. The dogs startled it and it scrunched back into it's shell and stayed there for a very long time. When the dogs went into the house, the snapper raised it's head out of it's shell, looked around and disappeared.
It's not to often we get visitors of this nature. But, I did enjoy it's company while it was here.
2 comments:
I once read an article about a snapping turtle hunter/catcher. I believe the article was in the NewYorker but I can't be sure. He claimed that in every farm pond of any size there were at least 100 snappers. After he got permission from the disbelieving farmer, he would proceed to pull out dozens.
I once saw a fairly large one in the middle of the road when riding my bicycle. I was trying to shoo it off the road without much success until a motorist stopped and gave me a hand. We found a cast off 2x4, stopped traffic both ways and managed to push, coax the turtle off the road and into a ditch. Unlike yours, this one was not intimidated at all and hissed and chomped on the 2x4 but it was a much larger one which probably weighed about 25 lbs., if the effort to push it was any indication. Thanks for the rose info.
Snapping Turtles have a huge attitude. The reason my guy got so wary was because I didn't get close enough for striking. I'm sure if I did I would have gotten the same hissing and nastiness as you did.
When I worked nights, on my way into the job one evening, a huge 50 or so pounds of snapper had traffic stopped both ways. This one was big enough to cause flats easily if you tried to drive around it. But someone had already hit it as it's shell was cracked and broken. One brave soul stopped and tried to coax it off the road with a handfull of grass. I think several layers of burlap and a club would have been a better choice. I'm not being cruel. That shell was damaged pretty badly and the animal would have probably died by morning.
Snappers are dangerous animals but since this young one, yesterday, was in good health, there was no reason to interfer with his journey other than to take a few pictures. He's gone today...probably at the toad pond which is where he was headed.
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