Snapping Turtles

During the warm months of the year, a common activity for me is to move turtles off the highway so they don't get run over.  Like other members of the reptile family, turtles have to thermo-regulate in order to function, hence basking on warm road surfaces.  It is always an interesting twist when the animal is a snapping turtle that doesn't want to be moved off the highway.  Other water turtles and box turtles (technically tortoises) just go in their shell, pee a little upon being picked up, and are perfectly happy to be placed a safe distance away from the highway.  (For you skeptical readers like myself, you're probably thinking this doesn't do any good because the turtle will just go back to the highway.  In my experience, I have never seen a turtle return to the road, and I drive the same stretch of road multiple times in a day.) 

The turtle pictured above (from June 15, 2010) was not at all pleased that I wanted him to move off the road.  Now, I would love to exaggerate and say that I have really big feet, but that just wouldn't be right.  I wear a women's size 7, making this guy just about 9 in long.  Snapping turtles are much more complicated than other turtles because they are innately aggressive.  Luckily, I had a large sheet pan in my car that I used to push him, little by little, off the road and into the ditch. 

I've never actually seen this happen, but I've heard that even if you're holding a snapping turtle by the tail, their neck is still long enough to reach around and bite you.  While I enjoy helping wildlife survive and thrive, I'm not willing to risk a finger or toe.  The sheet pan is probably my most creative method so far, but I've used other objects as well.  A different situation involved me baiting a much larger snapping turtle into biting the end of a wrapping paper tube in order to drag him off the road. 

I suppose if I didn't wear flip-flops so often, neither the sheet pan or the wrapping paper tube would have been necessary.