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Thursday, June 03, 2010

yesterday...the eggs...

today....a turtle!


Upon leaving the house this morning, I almost drove right over this snapping turtle as it crawled across the driveway. Quickly, I called Brillo Man on my cell phone - knowing that had I left the scene, the turtle would be gone! Brillo Man wrestled this guy (or more than likely a gal...as it was far, far from the pond - probably just laid eggs someplace!) into a bin. And there it sat until he and Olivia took it later this afternoon to Riverside Park - whereupon it will probably wind its way through the river waters...right back to our pond!

This was a small one - the shell only about 14" in length. Somewhere lurking the murky waters of the pond are the monster ninja turtles! Beware of those! They can snap your toes right off! Brillo Man put the handle of an ice scraper in the bucket and WHOA!! you should have seen this gal go crazy!! Snapping every which direction! I wouldn't want to encounter one of these in the pond...for sure!! Did you notice the claws?! Ugh!


Tuesday, June 01, 2010

Eggs

While Brillo Man was excavating a new "road" through our property today he unearthed several nests of snapping turtle eggs. While it breaks my heart that all these little turtles have come to the end of their life cycle, it makes to happy to know that we will not be hatching any more snappers into the pond! We have enough of them already!

There were approximately 25 eggs on the surface - many more underneath the dirt. Each slightly smaller than a ping pong ball and laid over 100 feet from the edge of the pond. They will make a nice dinner for the resident skunk or the raccoons or an o'possum...