Snapping Turtles

It's rainy today, kinda cool. Not really all that rainy, but, it's trying. We desparately need it, so, I'm praying.

It's been a dry summer, one of the driest since I was a kid. The summers of '76 and '77 were like this. But, today, it's trying valiently to rain.

What does this have to do with snapping turtles?

On my way back to the office after breakfast this morning, I saw what looked like a rock on the tar ahead of me. When I got closer, I realized the rock was moving. It turned out to be a small snapping turtle -- new born or about a year old, I'm not sure. Regardless, he looked tres' prehistoric. I watched him for about five minutes until he finally got into the tall grass along the side of the road.

Chances are he won't make it.

Snappers are cool, though, cool in that crocodile/alligator way -- if you're not careful, you're gonna lose a finger or an arm or a leg. It goes along with our fascination for bad boys and bad girls -- they challenge our sense of safety.

While I watched, I was joined by one of the kitchen helpers, Matt, and we started talking about snappers, and I told him of hunting turtles in the spring for making turtle soup. I also told him one of my favorite stories of my youngest sister.

We had snappers on the farm as a kid. We'd see them fairly often in the lower fields as they were finding places to lay eggs. We'd watch them, and harvest random ones. Turtle meat is pretty tasty, don'cha know? They're typically active like that when we would be working the fields. One time, when Dad, sistertroll #3, and I were picking rocks, the sistertroll almost sat on a momma snapper laying eggs.

Now, if you're getting weird images of the sistertroll, that's quite alright -- she is a troll after all -- but she just didn't run out and try and sit on snappers as they were in the middle of a field.

Dad was taking the tractor to the rock pile to dump the load we'd just picked, and the sistertroll decided to take a seat on some logs next to a drainage ditch. We'd just finished clearing off about 10 acres of land, and we were picking way more rocks than normal, so, I can't say I blame her for wanting to sit for a bit. I kept grubbing up a few rocks that Dad wanted out of the ground by the time he returned (it usually took about five minutes round trip to the rock pile). Suddenly, I heard the sistertroll let out a bloodcurdling scream and looked up just in time to see her run past me. I couldn't figure out what was going on, so, I decided to take a peek over at the log pile.

I thought maybe it was a garter snake -- most of my family doesn't do well with snakes -- but, it wasn't a snake...

Between the criss-cross mish-mash of logs there was a big ol' Mamma Snapper laying eggs. She looked up at me, popped out her eyes and hissssssssssssed like a Sleestak. I grinned, went back to grubbing out the rocks, and then, when Dad returned from the rock pile, he asked where the sistertroll was. He laughed just as hard as I wanted to when I told him, and we picked a few more loads before throwing the turtle into the loader and heading to the house for lunch.

We ate the turtle a week later.

On a side note -- I had a teacher in Middle School that looked like a Sleestak -- talked like one, too.