MUSKOGEE DAILY PHOENIX (Oklahoma) 03 July 05 Ugly has a look, and it's in the way we act (David Gerard)

My dad once told me, "Don't worry about being ugly, son. It's like anything else. You get used to it."

He was right - you can get accustomed to anything.

And, of course, two types of ugly exist. There's a look to ugly, which can't be helped, and there's an ugly way of acting, which can be, and should be, remedied.

Three years ago, my youngest son picked up a newly hatched snapping turtle. We've kept lizards, snakes, tarantulas and a black widow spider at different times, so the snapping turtle wasn't something out of the usual, except he's the epitome of ugly.

But again, that's no fault of his own. God made him that way.

And for some reason, God saw fit to give him a forceful, ravenous way of eating.

It's repulsive.

After keeping a snapping turtle for three years, I'd rather watch and listen to a pack of hyenas eat.

We fed the turtle reptile sticks - short, green slivers of processed waste material that float and the turtle snaps at with voracious head thrusts, missing most of the time and making loud pops and gurgles, and as I said, missing the food most of the time and smacking his repulsive visage into an aquarium rock or the side of the glass - and it's horrendous to listen to or watch.

I put the food in the aquarium and then left the room.

But you get a break from the disgusting devouring every winter. He just stops eating for three or four months. Then one day, he decides to start his gluttonous ways again.

We are letting him go today. He's outgrown the aquarium, and all God's creatures deserve room to move, respect for their way of life - despite their lack of proper etiquette - and liberty. He also needs a place to call his own and a friend that understands his needs.

Our turtle, which happens to be a common snapping turtle, won't have trouble finding friends or a mate. His species is doing fine. In fact, you may have dodged one of them on Oklahoma roadways in the spring when they're on the hunt.

But his closest cousin, the alligator snapping turtle, isn't so well off.

The alligator snapping turtle is in trouble in Oklahoma, so much so the National Fish Hatchery in Tishomingo is helping the reclusive - even uglier than the common snapping turtle - reptile make a comeback.

Kerry Graves, hatchery manager, told me the alligator snapping turtles are dying out, mostly due to habitat loss, and a study by Oklahoma State University graduate students determined only a couple of areas in the state still support a viable population, one of them at the Sequoyah National Wildlife Refuge near Vian.

Graves said the Tishomingo facility has 16 brood alligator snapping turtles, about 100 hatchlings from 1 to 3 years old, and 200 eggs the hatchery is incubating. Soon, Graves said, the hatchery will begin releasing the hatchlings into the wild.

If you see an alligator snapping turtle in the wild, don't take him or her home and, by all means, don't kill the animal because of its looks or any other reason you might come up with. They're protected, and it's illegal to have one in your possession.

So obey the law and be kind to the alligator snapping turtle. Like many of God's creatures, the alligator snapping turtle has not been treated compassionately by humans.

Snapping turtles can't control the way they look or eat, but what's really ugly is the way we treat them and the way we gobble up and destroy the places where these animals used to live.

We're always looking for new land to develop and forget that somebody had a home on that property before we got there.
Ugly has a look, and it's in the way we act

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• OK Press: Ugly has a look, and it's in the way we act - W von Papineäu, Thu Jul 28 18:41:58 2005