SUNDAY HERALD (Halifax, Nova Scotia) 04 July 04 Turtles, turtles, yeah yeah yeah (Kim Kierans)
A 13-year old from Bridgewater had an experience of a lifetime last month as a midwife to an expectant snapping turtle.
Shayne Crouse saw a turtle the size of a hubcap crawl above the bank of the river on LaHave Street. He told Stacey Colwell of the Bridgewater Bulletin that he was afraid a car would run over it, so he picked up the turtle by the shell and put it back in the water. But the turtle refused to stay put. It was determined to crawl up the bank.
Shayne realized that the turtle was on a mission when she started digging one hole, then another and another after that until finally settling on a suitable nesting site.
The snapper dug a nest about a foot deep and laid almost 40 eggs. Shayne stayed with the turtle for hours to make sure no one harmed her or her eggs.
He watched as she carefully covered each egg with soil after it was laid. When she was done, he picked her up and put her back in the water.
"I just found it really interesting because I'd never seen anything like that happen before." Shayne said.
Information on the freshwater turtle on the Nova Scotia Museum of Natural History Website says this is the time of year the turtles leave the water to lay eggs in sand, gravel, road banks, garden soil and even sawdust piles.
The eggs Shayne's turtle laid will hatch in September or October.
Not only are freshwater snappers on the move this time of year, but so are female wood turtles in Guysborough County. New traffic signs will soon be up to alert motorists to slow down for turtle crossings.
Biologist Mark Pulsifer told the Guysborough Journal that he's heard reports that drivers between Guysborough and Sunnyvale are striking as many as five wood turtles on a trip.
The new rectangular signs are yellow with a turtle silhouette. The signs will be put up at about a dozen of the most popular crossing places, where the roads run parallel to rivers.
Mr. Pulsifer said wood turtles are attracted to highway shoulders in search of "the right kind of gravel for nesting." He said if they survive the crossing, turtles move on to sites such as river beaches where they dig holes and lay about eight eggs which are slightly smaller than ping pong balls.
Like the snapper, wood turtles are fussy about where they lay their eggs. Mr. Pulsifer watched one wood turtle dig 13 test holes before finding just the right one.
While the wood population around the St. Mary's River is healthy compared to other areas, it's classified as a species of special concern.
Raccoons eat 85 per cent of their eggs.
Other threats are the people who take the turtles home for pets and drill holes through their shell to tie them up. "They're cute and cuddly, that's the attraction," Mr. Pulsifer said.
The problem comes when people tire of them and want to set them free.
"When you let them go and relocate them to another spot, it changes the gene pool."
Mr. Pulsifer said as many as 70 per cent of the wood turtles his team has come across have suffered injuries at some point. Turtles like to climb "but they fall down a lot."
It's against the law to remove turtles from nesting sites, but Mr. Pulsifer said if motorists see a wood turtle trying to cross the highway, "it's okay to pull over, and take them off the road."