Turtle For A Day

            This week brought a fun little adventure to our house. On our way home during our morning walk, Colleen and I came across a very adorable baby snapping turtle, who was unwisely crossing a road. So, we decided to help the little fellow out.

            He was very friendly, though he certainly wasn’t fond of being picked up by his still-soft shell – he used his little legs to push at the fingers holding him until Colleen decided to let him stand on her hands for the rest of the walk home. This led to him walking with us, in a manner, as he began walking on his own as well – with Colleen putting one hand in front of the other for the determined little guy. And he always seemed to want to go in the same direction – towards the sun. To us, this validated our decision to interfere with nature, as his path would have taken him across the road, into a farm field during plowing season, then across a far busier road into another farm field which he would have to cross before reaching something that vaguely resembled safety.

            We got him home and made him a temporary tank to live in until we could safely relocate him. There was some small desire to keep him as a pet, or to keep him around for a few days before returning him to the wild, but he clearly didn’t like his enclosure and he nearly constantly tried to escape. We also decided that he was too young for us to keep him very long without risking harming his ability to survive in nature – he was so young that he still had his egg-tooth and a small amount of whatever the egg-equivalent of an umbilical cord is. Plus, he was an at-risk species in the region, so we needed to get him back out into the wild as soon as we could.

            So, as soon as we had a moment of time, we took him out to where we’d decided he would have the best chance at survival. We considered taking him to a nearby park which had ponds, but we decided that the high-traffic and fishing in the area might not be good for such a little turtle, so instead we took him to part of the trails we walk on where there is a nearby stream, figuring that it was roughly the direction he was heading in and about halfway between the ponds and where we found him – so if his instincts were taking him to the pond, he would have a much shorter journey, and only one infrequently used road to cross.

            We deposited him on the side of the trail, pointed in the direction of the stream, and here his movement stopped. All this time, he had been moving fairly consistently – either walking along Colleen’s hands or trying to escape his makeshift tank, though he never hissed or bit at us, or showed any sign of aggression. He just stood there, his neck stretched out so he could look over his shell at us as we loomed above him, waiting for him to walk off. It was an interesting moment, as he seemed more curious than anything. I couldn’t help feeling that he had some small amount of understanding of what we were trying to do for him, or at least that he was exceptionally confused as to why we were letting him go.

            After this had gone on for some time, we finally gave up on him and lifted him one last time to move him directly into the underbrush where he would be safer, should he decide to continue being statuesque.

            We have no way of knowing if what we did actually helped him, or if he will survive. We very much hope that his interaction with us hasn’t taught him that he has nothing to fear from predators. However, we do believe that what we did gave him a far better chance at survival than his plodding course across busy roads and farms would have. We’ll probably never know – but, on the other hand, perhaps someday we’ll come across a much larger snapping turtle on the trail. Then he’ll let us know what he really thought about our little rescue operation.

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