A tale of two turtles

A few years ago, we had a water oak in our yard cut down. It was too close to the house, and, being a not-especially strong tree, the wind—we’re in Louisiana, so read hurricane—might cause it to fall on our small, unprotected home.

What remained was a stump that gradually, over time, decayed. A few days ago, we burned it, or as much as we could.

The next morning it was still smoldering. We were watching the smoke curl upward when my wife, Gaywynn, spotted a turtle next to the smoking stump.

“There’s a turtle!” she said. “It’s next to the fire!”

We ran outside to the turtle. It was about a foot long, and clearly not a baby. What was it? My iNaturalist app told me it was a red-eared slider (Trachemys scripta elegans).

Turtle!

“We have to make sure it doesn’t get into the fire!” Gaywynn warned.

What to do? Should we move it somewhere to safety? Did it need to be near water? We don’t have water on our land or nearby. Should we just put it in the woods?

I texted Erik Johnson, a conservation scientist with the Audubon Society in Louisiana and an expert on birds as well as other plants and animals of the region. I’d met him at a bird banding workshop. “What should we do?” I asked.

Then it struck me that we were the classic interferers. How can this poor animal survive without our help? We must rescue it! It needs us! It can’t make its way through life without our intervention!

“Look at this turtle!” I said to Gaywynn. “It seems healthy! It’s nice-sized! It came here on its own! No one kidnapped it and dropped it in our yard! It fucking doesn’t need our help!” I started laughing insanely.

Red-eared slider. Note the red stripe in back of the right eye.

The message came back from Erik. “I'd just leave it. Might be looking for high ground to lay eggs.”

So we did. We went back inside and, from time to time, watched the turtle move across our lawn, first going one way, then another. Something drew our attention away for a bit, and when we looked back, it was gone.

“Man, that turtle is fast!” I said, laughing at how absurd that sounded. But true! We couldn’t find a trace of it.

That crisis resolved, we had errands to do. We set off. We drove down a road that cut through developments when we spotted another turtle making its way across that road. Cars were driving by fast. It could be run over any second. We passed it and quickly made a U-turn and stopped.

I got out of the car, ran across the divide to the turtle. I started to pick it up to carry it to the side of the road out of danger when I realized that it was a snapping turtle (Chelydra serpentina). It was smaller than the turtle we’d found in our yard but substantial enough. As I reached down to grab its shell, it turned and came at me, head extended, mouth open, jaws ready.

Snapping turtle. Don’t f with it. (Photo by Turtle Survival Alliance.)

This creature was aggressive and unafraid. If I went to one side, it turned, following me, its neck extended, powerful mouth poised. Afraid? Me?

Suddenly, another car screeched to a halt and a young woman rolled down her window and leaned out.

“Take it to the side!” she yelled. Which was what I was trying to do without having a finger removed.

“It’s a snapper!” I yelled back.

She jumped out, went to her trunk and pulled out something. She ran across the road to me and the turtle. Cars were whizzing by. She handed me what she was carrying, something shrink-wrapped.

“What’s this?” I asked, taking the package.

“Frozen chicken. See if he’ll bite it, then flip him over the side.”

I could see it was Cajun chicken, because it had a deep rust color, the result of being smeared with the seasonings I had become so familiar with living here in southwest Louisiana.

Very similar to what was handed to me.

There was about a foot of concrete along the side of the road, the barrier of a sidewalk. I placed the edge of the frozen chicken package near the snapper’s jaws. He lunged at it, took it.

“Bite that chicken, you bitch!” the young woman said.

The turtle let go, perhaps insulted by the woman’s words. I placed the frozen chicken under the turtle’s body and, after a few attempts, flipped it over the edge of the concrete onto the grass.

“Good job,” the woman said, taking her frozen chicken back, running back to her car and zooming away.

I crossed the road to our car, and then we drove away, too.

Later, I read the snapping turtle’s bio and came upon this, “It may be tempting to rescue a common snapping turtle found on a road by getting it to bite a stick and then dragging it out of immediate danger. This action can, however, severely scrape the legs and underside of the turtle and lead to deadly infections in the wounds.”

I didn’t read anything about frozen chicken.