Wow, I normally do not post twice in a day, but this has been a pretty interesting one. As I noted earlier, we found a decent sized black rat snake in the horses' schluffing barn. I heaved my mass off the couch in the afternoon and went out for a bit of exercise. Just after I got down to the end of the driveway, I saw a grey rock-like object moving accross the road. I quickly realized that it was a turtle. We live on a country road, but cars do come by the farm pretty frequently. This turtle was going to end up turtle-mash if I did not get him out of the road. I went over to pick him up and I realized it was a baby snapping turtle. He was small, but fiesty. I touched his shell and he actually jumped... yes, jumped up to bite my finger. Turtle got hops, son. Now, when you've been a farmer as long as I have, you know how to pick up a snapping turtle. I grabbed him by his tail and I took him up to the house so I could snap a few pictures of him. Here he is:
He was just so incredibly interesting... like a little dinosaur. The shell was all spikey and he had some pretty serious claws. Still, the mouth was the most impressive part. This guy was not big, but I was not about to let him bite me... and he wanted to bite me too:
Obviously, the little guy didn't know that I was trying to save his life so I can't blame him for feeling a need to defend himself. Even though he wanted to do me bodily harm, there was something about him that I found endearing and familiar. I'm not sure what it could be...
Well, after I got a few pictures, I released the turtle back into a stream so he could go about his turtle doings. I know that snapping turtles are generally found in ponds, but there was no accessible pond so the stream was the best I could do for him. It was a better place than the road anyway.
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