Topic: Look what walked into my front yard this morning.

[tomkimberly]

Making a bee line to my front door!








Tom

[Frankenkit]

I love turtles.  Where did he end up going?

[Sam Green Racing]

Soup

[Gordon]

Soup

 

When I was a kid my family came across a large tortoise crossing the highway on the way back home from my grandparents' place in West Texas.  We picked it up and took it home to keep in our back yard as a pet, and we named it "Soup" because that's what it would have been if we hadn't intervened.

[tomkimberly]

Well he is not really a turtle, he is a desert tortoise!

I called a local tortoise rescue group and they came and picked him up. I thought for a short while to try and keep him however I feared he would walk into the pool and drown.

I did ask several people in the area and no one came to claim it before I called the rescue group. It is a federal crime to have one of these that did not come from a licensed breeder!

Tom

[BeSeeingYou]

I picked one up off a hot asphalt bike trail a few weeks ago and put him over closer to the pond he was trying to reach.  He was about that size and he hissed and was not happy.  So much for appreciation.

[DammitDan]

My brother in law (a quasi-herpetologist and cave & karst biologist) was down in Florida catching alligator snapping turtles with his feet as part of a research project a few years ago...  Those bastards can be pretty nasty!  He would walk beside a canoe with Carharts on and grab it when it bit him toe to throw it up in the canoe.

[BeSeeingYou]

That snapper reminds me of a story.  Several years ago I was in the BWCA on a canoe trip and caught a nice 4 lb small mouth bass.  It was after supper so I decided to keep it on a stringer for breakfast in the morning.  We were in this nice small sandy bay and I tied it up in shallow water.  The next morning all that was left was a bit of gill on my stringer.  Later I notice a big snapper swimming around in the bay.   

[bill440cars]

         Reminds me, about my deal with turtles. I have a habit of stopping, when I see a turtle on the road and putting then on the other side so they won't get run over. Well, one day I saw a snapper and a fair size one at that. Without thinking, I stopped, got out, went over and attempted to pick that sucker up (with my hands as far back as possible and he tried to get me anyway. And I thought he was going to reach my hand! I left him where he was and figured, what ever he got, he deserved!   Then, about a month ago, Karla and I was crossing Fort Chaffee and I saw something up a bit on the road and it turned out to  be a very large old snapper! It must have been about 2ft in diameter. I just looked and left!   During the Spring and Summer, I have found as many as 5 turtles in my back yard. I have to rescue them, if my dog (Cocoa) finds them, she starts barking real loudly (probably echoes in their shell) and she turns them over and messes with them, so I put them in the front yard, so they can have SOME peace.

[Duke McDukiedook]

Holy Crap, snappers will bite off toes and fingers, your brother in law must be bat#$%* crazy!

[ProTeal55]

I had a painted turtle as a pet (named Fred) for 21 years !

[Inigo Montoya]

Saw  big snapper like that before. Thing was huge  and stinky! there was some road work in the area, that might have stirred it up. It was mean looking!

[DammitDan]

Cory is pretty crazy...  He went down again the next season to slog through the swamp for 2 weeks to catch poisonous snakes.  

Reminds me of a story; the whole family was out canoeing one day and we heard a splash and a squeal behind us...  Look back to see Liz (my sister) bracing herself in a severely rocking canoe and her husband (Cory) in the water shoving his whole arm (up to his shoulder!) down a hole in the riverbank.  He pulled out a 3 foot long something or other (non-poisonous) which was apparently very rare for the area.  I sure as hell wouldn't want to shove my arm down a hole in the riverbank, ESPECIALLY if I know there's a snake waiting at the end of it!  

He also seems to have the ability to pick out a random rock, flip it over and pull a snake from underneath it!

[tramp]

turtles and making a beeline
there seems to be a problem with that statement