Turtle Rescue

Last Wednesday night we were on our way home from picking up someone around dinnertime when we found this:



right in our neighborhood. It was near lots of traffic, so we thought we should rescue it. Having boys interested in all things green and scaley, I knew this was a painted turtle, I also knew it was relatively harmless and we just needed to watch out for the claws on the feet when picking it up to move it. Picking it up around the side of the shell allowed us to carry it the two blocks to our wetlands and let it go safely. No big deal and actually kind of cool. It was a large painted turtle, at least larger than the ones at the nature center or zoo interactive exhibits, so it was fun for the kids to see they could get that big.

Then on Sunday, we were in for a real treat. While washing up dishes after lunch I saw from my kitchen window a rock in the backyard that was moving...a large rock! Another turtle! How exciting!



It turns out that this was no cute painted turtle! This was a giant snapping turtle. Anyone who has spent any time at the lake in Minnesota knows you don't mess with a snapping turtle. You don't even have to have boys to know that one! We think it was a female up laying eggs in our wooded area (baby snappers to come, oh how lucky are we!). She was moving pretty fast to get back to water when the boys decided to make her a toy. The dog thought this rock was pretty interesting too and as you can see (that is Zach's six year old hand), she was not small!



We decided we had to move her back to the wetlands before one of our kids learned the hard way that you don't mess with a snapper. We got a bucket and I carefully put her inside. She snapped at me only once, but I was not close enough to get caught, lucky me. It was enough to scare the crap out of me though and show the kids just how fast they snap! We got her back to the marsh where she took off for the water and headed home. No hard feeling here, we were glad to see her go!

Add that to a new robin's nest under the deck filled with eggs and we have our very own nature center and educational area right here at home! No need for summer field trips!