BOLTON COMMON (Massacusetts) 09 June 06 On the road and in the garden-It's turtle time (Ron McAdow)
Imagine, in this season of good times outdoors, that you gave a garden party for wildlife. How would you manage the guest list? Which of our local wild animals would you leave out? Shrubbery-munching, tick-carrying white-tailed deer have lost popularity, but their delicate beauty might get them invited anyway. Some fault fishers and coyotes because they are supposed to take a house cat now and then - but others decline to be prejudiced on that account. Everyone hates mosquitoes, but they aren't wildlife. A mosquito is an itch with wings.
I suppose the creature with the worst public relations is the snapping turtle. We'd all be apt to snub the snappers. Unlike foxes or cedar waxwings, they don't look like they shop at the right stores. With snapping turtles in the crowd, no one would pass the hors d'oeuvres. Finger food?
Snappers visit many gardens uninvited, especially if there's a pond in the neighborhood. In June, a prompt in their venerable reptilian software - they run an operating system millions of years older than dinosaurs-tells lady turtles that it's time to haul out, find a patch of sunny dirt, and dig a hole. Though she usually puts her nest near water, sometimes she rambles quite a distance before selecting a suitable site. When her excavation is complete, she deposits several dozen eggs, replaces and smoothes the dirt, and returns to the slow-paced aquatic life of a snapping turtle.
If all goes well, the formless goo within each spherical shell organizes itself , day by long summer day, into the teensy, almost-cute baby snapper that will emerge from the ground in September and submit itself to life's contingencies. Snapping turtles become sexually mature in about five years, and with luck can live and reproduce for decades.
Because leaving the water to lay their eggs exposes turtles to traffic, a few kind-hearted people put up signs to remind the rest of us to watch for reptiles in the road. Although most of our turtle species are all-too-inconspicuous, snappers can be remarkably large-adults often reach 35 pounds, and 50 pounds is not unheard of.
A big snapper on the pavement halts traffic. People leave their cars and try to assist, but turtles utterly disregard suggestions given in English, and are usually equally oblivious to well-intended gestures. I now carry a snow-shovel in my trunk, useful in such emergencies, but once before I formed that habit I stopped to help a family rescue a snapper. Lifting the resistant, muddy beast, trying to be careful, I overheard the child remark to her mother, "He's the bravest man in the world!" - a highly erroneous proposition that stuck in memory's vanity chest.
Most turtle eggs are not long in the ground; they are found and devoured by sharp-nosed mammals, including skunks - another animal rarely welcome at parties. Enough snapping turtle nests survive to keep our ponds and rivers stocked with these sturdy, strange-looking creatures that have proven well adapted to life on our corner of the planet.
It's turtle time