Snapper!

[tjwilhelm]

Driving home this evening, I saw a large, dark lump in the road. I slowly swerved around it; and, as I passed, I exclaimed out loud, "Turtle!"

I stopped, threw the tranny into Reverse, and carefully backed up, pulling off onto the shoulder and starting the emergency flashers.

As I approached, I could see she was not able to pull her body into her shell, she had huge claws, and her shell was covered with moss. Yup, all signs that this was indeed a large, female, "Common Snapping Turtle." I walked around behind her and gently tapped on the back of her shell...S-N-A-P!!! Wow! Her neck stretched way out, rapidly swept back toward my finger, and SNAP. Wisely, I had tapped far enough away from her head that she didn't take my finger off.


She's a biggun! I wish I could tell how old she is. Yes, I did confirm she's a she. I wanted to get her off the road. I had a small shovel in the back of my truck and I used it to move her. In the process, I had to flip her onto her back. If I remember correctly, the males have a concave underside. This allows them to mount the female and stay more stable against the rounded back of her shell. The females have a flat underside, I believe. If my memory is accurate, this specimen is definitely female...

Guests can not see images in the messages. Please register in the forum.Snapper 01 by tjwilhelm148149, on Flickr

Guests can not see images in the messages. Please register in the forum.Snapper 04 by tjwilhelm148149, on Flickr

[Phaedrus]

So did you get her off the road? That's a good sized old turtle! I wonder how old she was to reach that size? They can live over a hundred years, correct?

[crashdive123]

There's a new Turtleman in town.

[Rick]

Oh, man. Don't tell me I need a list for Illinois. More dinosaurs.

[finallyME]

I have two red sliders in a fish tank at home. One male, one female. The store clerk told me that the females have short front claws and the males have 2 long claws (out of 4) on each front foot. They use the longer claws to grab onto the females. I wonder if that holds true to other turtles. I will check for the concave belly when I get home.

Great little snapper you found though.

[hunter63]

Very cool.....
Had a nest in the corn field last year....watch the female lay the eggs....don't know if any hatched, corn was already growing.

Haven't seen it this year, but someone put up several "turtle crossing sign" on the highway across the river for "The Place"....wanted a pic, but never had a camera with me....(no, none on phone)

[WY21lmb]

Growing up in MN, we saw our fair share of snapping turtles. The biggest one any of my family ever saw was found in a mud puddle in the middle of a field that we were disking. A cousin working for us spotted it, got off the tractor and drug it to the disk. We had a cut off 55 gallon oil drum mounted upright there that we sometimes filled with rocks to add weight so the disk would cut deeper. My cousin got that turtle into the drum and headed back to our place in time for supper. That turtle could only get its legs out of its shell about to the wrists, but its head was mobile enough to snap sticks my brother and I poked near it. Everyone was fascinated with the snapper except my dad, he told my cousin to take that turtle somewhere a long away from our farm and let it go. My cousin took it to a nearby ‘town’, population 12, and dumped it in the main flood control ditch there. That snapper did fine till it made the mistake of eating all the ducklings, and ended up as soup.

[xjosh40x]

In Mississippi we have an over abundance of knobby bowls. Every pond has turtles catches to rid them from ruining a pond. Old folk claim that if there is moss on the shell it's 50 years plus.
I've seen pictures of alligator snappers caught on trot lines that had to be pulled to shore because they were too big to get in the boat. They say they can reach several hundred pounds.