CAPE CODDER (Orleans, Massachusetts) 03 June 05 Snapper's eyes bigger than his stomach (Marilyn Miller)
Provincetown: This tale is not for delicate ears. It's about an old snapping turtle, found in pitiful shape near Snail Road on Sept. 20, with his neck and arm and leg muscles atrophied to the point where animal control officer Ruth Ann Cowing didn't think it would make it alive to the Cape Wild Life Center in West Barnstable.
Cowing noticed that the turtle's shell was cracked and assumed he had been hit by a car. But once the turtle arrived at the wildlife center, Judy Ellal determined the shell crack was from an old injury. What was ailing the turtle, which she estimated to be well over 50 years old, was that he had bitten off more than he could chew.
To be exact, she could see that had had "a blue jay stuck inside of him that, with a lot of tender loving care" as she put it, "he was able to pass."
So after more than eight months of daily feedings of the fish he loves to eat, the turtle was released at Clapp's Pond Tuesday, and made a beeline for the water.
"He didn't even look back to say goodbye," said Priscilla Teheriault, a volunteer at the life center, who drove him down in a van, along with Mary Anne Keenoy, another volunteer, and released him near the pond's edge.
Ed Michalski found the turtle in September and called Cowing, who took one look at it and decided to get some help. She was concerned it might bite her, so she called her husband Brian Cowing, who said he grew up playing with and picking up snapping turtles, and he and her mother, Ruth Dutra, helped her get it into her truck.
"He was so dehydrated at that point that he couldn't even lift up his head," said Dutra. "Ruth Ann put a towel over him and called the wildlife center, and they said to bring him up, but they didn't think he would make the trip."
Cowing thinks the turtle caught the blue jay, then went looking for water "to help him get that bird out of his system." But there was no water near Snail Road, and he became badly dehydrated.
"I'm amazed to see him now with his legs out and his head up high," Cowing said.
Keenoy often fed him during his eight-month stay at the life center. "He definitely has a personality," she said. "He would come right up to the end of the tank and stick his neck out when I fed him his fish."
Snapper's eyes bigger than his stomach