Large turtle found, released (Daniel Martins)

MIRAMICHI LEADER (New Brunswick) 30 May 08 Large turtle found, released (Daniel Martins)

He was no ninja, was certainly out of his teens and probably wasn't a mutant, but the two-foot long, 20-pound snapping turtle recently discovered near Red Bank feared no man.
Cory Augustine and Justin Barnaby were driving near Oxbow Park over the Victoria Day weekend when they happened upon a suspicious bump in the road that turned out to be the irascible reptile.
"I didn't know what it was, then I saw it move," said an awed Barnaby. "His head reached out about seven inches and he started snapping. He wasn't like a normal turtle, he didn't go into his shell, he was snapping and going toward us. He was a vicious turtle."
After some maneuvering, the men captured the beast and took him into Red Bank, hoping to find a biologist who could tell his age. They stopped by area fisherman Malcolm Ward's home, who attested to the turtle's indignation at being caught.
"I took a look in the back of the truck and all I hear is a real loud hiss," Ward said. "Out of the ten or fifteen years I've spent fishing on the river, pretty much every day, I've never seen a turtle that big, ever."
He snapped a few pictures and took a few videos of the creature for his Facebook page, while local residents, attracted by the hissing, crowded around.
Ward wanted to name the turtle "Brutus," but eventually yielded to his young daughters' insistence that he be called "pointy," on account of the inch-long green spikes on his tail.
Once Barnaby and Augustine had shown it to a local river expert at the Miramichi Salmon Association (MSA), they released it where it had been found.
"It was good to let it go," Barnaby said. "I didn't want to keep it if they're rare around here."
Snapping turtles can be found from southeastern Canada to as far south as Ecuador. They eat almost anything they can catch, from insects to small mammals, and typically live as long as 30 years in the wild.
MSA president Mark Hambrook said the last time he had seen a turtle that size was in 1977, when he found a 38-pound specimen estimated to be around 40 years old.
The one caught near Red Bank weighed 20 pounds and was probably around 20 years old, and was still nowhere near the record. The largest snapping turtle ever caught in New Brunswick weighed in at 42 pounds and was around 50 years old.
Hambrook said the province was at the northern-most end of the turtles' range, making sightings of even normal-sized animals a rare treat.
"Some people will go almost their whole life and not see a turtle, unless it's in a pet store," he said.
http://miramichileader.canadaeast.com/news/article/310330