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EXPRESS-TIMES (Easton, Pennsylvania) 23 July 06 Swept away by snapping turtles (Arlene Koch)
When the phone rang at 8 a.m. I thought it was my son Jim calling but it wasn't. It was the matriarch of a farm family down the road who wanted to know if I knew anything about turtles.
I'm no herpetologist but as long as the questions don't get too deep I'm OK. And as soon as she started describing the "big" turtle in the driveway I knew she had to be talking about a snapper.
Out of the water snapping turtles (Chelydra serpentina) are mostly active at night but sometimes you see them in fields or next to roads during the day. In the water they're pretty docile but out of it, and they often move long distances away from water, they're not to be messed with.
Judging from the smoothness of its carapace (upper shell), this snapper was an adult that probably weighed about 5 pounds. That's not all that big by snapping turtle standards. But I still wasn't looking forward to moving it when the woman asked me to take it off her farm. She didn't want it near the cows because she said she was told that a snapping turtle will bite off cows' teats. True or not, I understood her thinking and five minutes later, with the help of her son, a shovel, a Williams Township recycling container, and a pair of heavy gloves, I had the snapper in the back of my car.
After I recycled the turtle, I drove back to the farm to return the container. And here's where things got weird. About 100 yards down the road from the farmhouse something rather large suddenly came out of a hayfield onto the road in front of me. My first stupid thought was that it looked like a small alligator because of its gait. Stranger pets have been dropped off out here in the country.
But this was another snapping turtle, a really big one that decided to plop down on the yellow line right in the middle of the road. In all honesty, I wanted to ignore it and just drive by but knew I couldn't. So back I went to the farmhouse. I couldn't find the son so I got the woman and a broom.
No way was I going to try to put this turtle in a container. I just wanted to get it off the busy road. A broom isn't exactly the best implement to use when moving a big snapper, but it was my only option at the time. Had I had a shovel I probably couldn't have moved it anyway once I managed to get this big, nasty turtle into it.
When I told Kathy Sieminski about my latest adventure later that day she said it was too bad there wasn't an Express-Times photographer around. And she was right. I can just see the caption reading, "Nature writer attempts to sweep large snapping turtle off road with broom." And the broom didn't even have any bristles on it!
Ten minutes later, with traffic backed up on both sides and a woman yelling at me to be careful because that was a snapping turtle (which I obviously knew) I finally got the turtle off the road. But if anyone else finds one, please don't call me.

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