Turtle Soup

Things at our house are always interesting. With not children around, I thought it would be pretty quite. Well, I was wrong :0) Instead of the children providing material to blog about, it is hubby!

In our backyard we have a pond. Nothing to great, in fact it is "a pond in progress"! Of course the backyard critters don't seem to mind. Before we went away, T had noticed a fairly large turtle around the pond. He always caught sight of it while it was headed into the water. Tuesday morning, before he went to work, he walked down to the pond and found the edges all tore up. He also was able to get a good look at the turtle. He then used the handy-dandy Internet to research our new family member. Well, what he found out did not make him happy. Instead of being of the friendly, please feel free to live in/around our pond type turtle, he discovered it was a snapping turtle. A female snapping turtle looking to make a nest and lay up 80 eggs! UGH! Once T found out all this wonderful information, he hot-footed it home to try to catch "Snappy" before she made her nest. He was able to catch her and place her in our recycling bucket. There is a place where he can take our unwanted critters so they can still be in their natural environment.

Please meet Snappy. Not exactly pretty is she, but then, I don't think blue is her color! She was very calm. That is until T turned the water on, and then she snapped her jaw closed quickly a couple of times! Once she realized it was just water, she left her mouth open to drink some of the water. T was able to leave her at her new home and she was not all that excited about it. He said she didn't want to get out of the bucket. Maybe the blue finally grew on her!

T was most happy to not have 80 little snapping turtles to contend with in our backyard.

But wait....

....when he got home the next afternoon, he found another one! She was trying to made her nest as well. The only difference was, she was NOT happy to be placed in the recycling container. T placed her in the bucket in the back of his truck, went into the house to change his clothes and get his things collected for prayer meeting. When he came out, she was out of the bucket and wandering around the back of his truck. He was able to relocate her to a new home as well.

I am really hoping neither one of our snappy mamas laid any of their little ones!