It keeps coming back
My friends from college and I have a reunion vacation every year in a cabin in the Adirondacks, and there is this turtle that lives in the pond on the property that keeps joining us. It is a massive snapping turtle. It looks just like the picture and it is terrifying.
Two years ago we tried to catch it. The reptile specialist in my department recommended a reinforced cardboard box and some sort of lasso on a very long stick. The advice was imparted reluctantly; he actually recommended staying away from it altogether and showed incredulity when I explained about the skinny dipping. As a somewhat fearsome individual himself, this was a shock, and it justified the alarmist attitude that was already preventing the boys from lounging in the inner tubes. Some impatient internet research had convinced me that snappers, while vicious and aggressive and sure to snap off your digits if you disturb them on land, are of a diffident and temperate personality underwater. Our empirical evidence only partially supported this claim: it did bite one of us on the foot; the foot, like the turtle, was in the water; the leg and all the rest was on land. (Amputation was avoided, and no one died of Salmonella poisoning.) This was, if I recall correctly, our introduction, and that first impression may have instilled an unreasonable level of antagonism between us.
Anyway the year we brought the relocation equipment, we couldn’t find the turtle. This year, with short memories and fresh enthusiasm for a splash in the lake, we saw it again. It likes hanging around the dock, and provides plenty of opportunity for ogling. So grotesquely prehistoric! I love it, but it scares me. It’s quite the summer thrill.
July 10th, 2008 at 9:57 pm
I’m curious how old this turtle could possibly be. I wonder if it could actually be 100 years old. It looks ancient and really, really crusty. Others contend that it can’t be more than a couple of decades old at the most. In other words, how long do snappers live? Could it really be a dinosaur of sorts? Also, what happens when the pond freezes in the winter?
July 11th, 2008 at 10:39 am
That thing is totally cretaceous. At its size I’d say it’s at least a 100 million years old.
July 11th, 2008 at 10:41 am
Although perhaps not as old as this one.
July 11th, 2008 at 1:23 pm
Does it usually hang out in the shallows or does it swim around in the deep water? We’ve only ever seen it in the shallows, but maybe that’s just because we can’t see it in the deep water. If I knew that it mostly hung out in the shallows stalking frogs and whatnot, I’d feel a lot happier.
July 11th, 2008 at 1:59 pm
I know they burrow quite deep into the mud. Maybe it’s the only true snapper in existence and moves from pond to pond underground. Maybe next year a radio collar is in order.
July 11th, 2008 at 3:11 pm
Or a harpoon.
July 21st, 2008 at 2:53 pm
More on New York State snapping turtles:
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/18/behind-the-dam-one-fierce-holdout/