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NAPERVILLE SUN (Illinois) 25 August 06 Slowly and steadily, baby turtles emerge (Kathy Millen)
When Bev Patterson Frier went to pick up her morning newspaper on her rain-slicked driveway in Naperville on Thursday, she found more than the headlines waiting for her.
Emerging from a muddy mound in her front yard were the first five hatchlings of the 44 eggs a mother snapping turtle had laid there 86 days earlier.
"We've been watching it and expecting them," said Frier, proud guardian of 12 baby snappers as of Thursday afternoon. "I think the rain softened the ground, which brought them out."
The mother turtle arrived in Frier's front yard May 30 and began digging a hole before she began to lay the nearly four-dozen golf ball-size eggs. Seemingly oblivious to Frier, her husband, Bill, and a few neighbors who gathered to watch, the turtle carefully arranged each egg with a hind leg before burying them under a protective layer of dirt. Her maternal instincts satisfied, she slowly left the yard, never to return.
A story on the eggs was published in the June 9 edition of The Sun. From that article, the Friers got plenty of feedback as well as an e-mail from a Minnesota turtle expert, who offered some helpful information. They also did research on the Internet.
With more knowledge about the sex lives and gestation periods of turtles than they ever needed, the couple watched over the mound of dirt, enclosing it with wire fencing to keep predators away. As time passed, with no baby turtles on board, they began to wonder if the eggs had in fact been fertilized. Digging one of them out earlier this week, they sliced it open and uncovered a live, healthy turtle. Bev Frier refers to that firstborn as "the preemie."
Caked in mud, its siblings began surfacing a few days later. The Friers expect it will be several days before all the turtles are hatched.
The Friers plan to release the babies at a nearby creek or pond and let their instincts take over.
"Mother Nature knows what she's doing," Bill Frier said. "We have a creek that runs through the back of the lot so I think we ought to take them somewhere near water and turn them loose. We really don't need to be up to our rear ends in snapping turtles."
Slowly and steadily, baby turtles emerge

yay!! hurray for the turtles and the nice ppl who took care of em!!