On the Road, II

Around eight in the morning on June 10, two people were crouching over something on the dirt road to the Reservoir, on the south side near the culvert just past the Model Airport, maybe a quarter mile before the north shore trailhead. They were guiding something that looked like a small tank.

Boulder resident Steve Levin took this picture of a snapping turtle

We stopped and got out. It was an enormous turtle – it looked like one of the Galapagos tortoises you see at petting zoos. “It’s a Box Turtle,” one of the women said.

The county had recently graded the road, and the soil on the sides was still soft. One woman’s daughter had been running earlier with the cross-country team, and had sent her mom a photo of the turtle with her running shoe next to it. The tank was about two feet long and about 18 inches across the dome. The women had driven over to discourage the turtle from laying eggs in the soft soil and to protect it from traffic.

The turtle had given up and was lumbering back toward the culvert when we got there. We saw it slip over the edge, disappearing into the cattails with a swish of its mighty muscular tail. Wow. We were all quiet with astonishment, as though a Nile crocodile had disappeared into the garden.

This snapping turtle was spotted on June 9 2011 by Boulder resident Phil Plait

A few days later I looked up ‘box turtles in Colorado.’ According to Colorado State, the top shell of the Ornate Box Turtle grows to about 5.7”. Our tank was clearly something else. There are only five choices for turtles in Colorado, and four of them stay quite small, so unless someone had released a pet monster, this one was a Snapper. http://ndis.nrel.colostate.edu/herpatlas/coherpatlas/cdow_herpetofaunal_atlas_species_turtle_terrapeneornataa.htm

I once found the headless body of a male mallard on the shore of the Res. Later I asked a ranger what might have happened to him, and the ranger said he was probably reaching down for some food when a Snapping Turtle got his head. Phew. I was glad the women trying to help the turtle thought it was a Box Turtle. But this being Boulder, they probably would have helped a Snapper, too. This turtle hadn’t threatened anybody, but had retreated into the swamp as fast as it could.

A few years ago we were on the trail on the north side of Coot Lake. It looked like dog poop all over the trail, but when I started picking it up I found it was newly-hatched Snapping Turtles, with tiny ridges on the back and tiny mouths opening and closing. They were drying out in the sun. They seemed to be headed for the ditch on the north side of the trail, whereas you could see that the mother had laid the eggs on the bank to the south, looking over the lake. Guessing that she meant them to tumble down the hill into the water, we spent a few minutes tossing them in.

Wikipedia: The common snapper was the central feature of a famous American political cartoon. Published in 1808 in protest at the Jeffersonian Embargo Act of 1807, the cartoon depicted a snapping turtle, jaws locked fiercely to an American trader who was attempting to carry a barrel of goods onto a British ship. The trader was seen whimsically uttering the words “Oh! this cursed Ograbme” (“embargo” spelled backwards). This piece is widely considered a pioneering work within the genre of the modern political cartoon.

According to the Tortoise Trust, Snapping Turtles coexisted with the dinosaurs, who were probably better neighbors. “Today’s snapping turtles have hardly changed from 215 million years ago.” http://www.tortoisetrust.org/articles/snappers.htm Yes, people have made soup out of them, probably when they had to. But human inhabitants of Boulder often have a strong sense of being invaders – in land previously held by Native Americans and in land needed by other species. People got outraged recently by the killing of a mother moose and her calf. The mother had injured a woman and her dog, which had come between her and the calf. Similarly, people mourn the death of a black bear that had broken into an RV.

http://www.tortoisetrust.org/articles/snappers.htm

What motivates us to run to the aid of another species, or people we don’t know?

Childhood memory: a turtle in the road in Westbrook, Connecticut. My father gets out of the car and lifts the turtle by the edges of the shell. As he carries it across the road, what looks like a snake comes out of the front, reaching around and snapping.

People in the water bathing beached whales. The Star Thrower of Loren Eisley. Some do what they can to help an individual survive. Heroic individuals, where human organizations fail utterly.

I thought of Rachel Corrie, who tried to protect Palestinian homes from Israeli bulldozers and died under the treads. To change the future for any species, including humans, may be too hard. Some of us will still try.

Rachel Corrie

Peace activist

Rachel Aliene Corrie was an American peace activist and member of International Solidarity Movement from Olympia, Washington, who was crushed to death by an Israel Defense Forces armored bulldozer in Rafah, in the southern part of the Gaza Strip. Wikipedia