Note to self: Check Wikipedia, THEN move turtle

Came home from some errands today to find this fella (or lady, never got that far) in my driveway:

Aww, I thought. A cute snapping turtle. Just like a regular turtle, but with sharp jaws to eat cabbage and dandelions and delicate flowers better. And certainly he can't reach that stubby neck out too far, so as long as I hold him steady while I carry him to the bushes everything will be cool.

So, we get about half way o the underbrush and the little bastard hisses and snaps his alarmingly long neck around toward one of my ten favorite fingers and earned himself a quicker trip to the ground than he was probably hoping for.

A quick perusal of Wikipedia afterward revealed such useful knowledge as:

"Lifting the turtle with the hands is difficult and dangerous. Some snappers can -- and will -- stretch their necks halfway back across their own carapace to bite."

"A handler must also be wary of injury; these turtles are aptly named, as they can snap with amazing speed and power - a large adult snapper can easily bite off a finger or toe."

And, when threatened, they "will pull arms, legs, head, and tail into their shell, fire flames out of the arm and leg cavities and spin around like a frisbee."

At least the armadillo moved on.

jg

Unless the Armadillo hired the turtle to distract you while he snuck into the house!

You ain't from around here, are ya? Southern kids learn a healthy respect for those things at a very young age. Glad you still have all your eye pokers.

That'll learn ya. The only safe place to grab a snapper is on the ass.

Did I just say that?

Florida born and raised, actually. Sad, huh?

Actually, it's the first snapper I've ever seen in the wild. We get gopher turtles all the time, as well as deer, several variety of snakes (caffeinated and decaffeinated), the occasional gator, squirrels, birds of all sorts and, of course, armadillos. First wild snapper I've seen in 39 years, though.

jg

There are no real deer in FL, just those lab-sized deer-looking facsimiles.

Classic damyankee transplant mistake.

You should be ashamed!

They grow pretty big up North, too.

I had a 40 pounder removed from my yard a few years ago. She kept trying to lay eggs on the lawn. The guy who showed up to take her away only had nine fingers.

A friend of mine tried to redirect one away from his garden with a wooden broom handle, which was subsequently snapped in half.

Man I love Canada.

No poisonous snakes or insects, no snapping turtles, no gators, no roaches.

Just Celine Dion.

Shawn

Trans_Maro wrote: Man I love Canada. No poisonous snakes or insects, no snapping turtles, no gators, no roaches. Just Celine Dion. Shawn

Yeah, but depending on where you are, you guys have teeth and claws.

Trans_Maro wrote: Man I love Canada. No poisonous snakes or insects, no snapping turtles, no gators, no roaches. Just Celine Dion. Shawn

But that's worse than all the others put together

Trans_Maro wrote: Man I love Canada. No poisonous snakes or insects, no snapping turtles, no gators, no roaches.

What part of Canada are you from? I've pulled snappers off the road in front of my house, so they didn't get hit. I see them every year. All the big cities have roaches, and rattle snakes are abundant in parts of Ontario. We do have salamanders, but we certainly don't have gators

Since we had snappers and copperheads up in Massachusetts, I'm pretty inclined to think they're in Canada as well.

I don't think either of them respect legal borders.

I know that at least one friend was bitten by a snapper while growing up in Ontario, and we had rattlesnakes. Celine Dion, she seemed to come later on.

Snappers are bad news. Sulcata Tortoises are good news.

Thats my buddy Spike.

Shawn, what part of Canada are you in? Must be the prairies, or somewhere without water! I've had encounters with dozens of those - the ones going walkabout are usually femaies laying eggs. Pick em up by the base of the tail, with your hand under its tummy to support it (otherwise you can do serious damage to its tail/spine).

And yah, they pack one hell of a bite. Front claws on the big ones are pretty effective too. :)

Wowak, that is one cute tortoise!!

Sulcata Tortoises??? WTF do you find them suckers?

Jeff

I am from the great white north of Michigan, and I have pushed my fair share of snappers off the road with a big stick.

I even had one as a pet for a winter one year...it was a really small baby one that I put in a goldfish bowl (they grow to the size of their environments, so he stayed small until I released him)....kinda cool, but he sure was stinky.

littleturquoiseb wrote: Sulcata Tortoises??? WTF do you find them suckers? Jeff

They're native to Africa, and are the worlds largest species of mainland tortoise. (Only Galapagos and Aldabra torts are bigger.) Mine are both rescues; Spike was found wandering in a park in Colorado, and Gomer was saved when a young boy who had raised him from a hatchling went off to college with the mandate from his a-hole father "do something with that thing or I will dispose of it." They are commonly purchased in petstores when they're about the size of a silver dollar by people who don't realize that they grow big and quickly, and after only a few years are too big for a terrarium. Many are released into the wild, and very few can survive that. Being a desert tortoise, they do not hibernate; if Spike hadn't been rescued he would surely not have survived the Colorado winter. Heres a picture of the boys wreaking havoc together.
Gomer is the bigger one in the back. His shell is deformed from malnutrition (his young keeper didn't do any research, instead he just fed him what the pet store sold him,) and his rear legs are badly atrophied from living in a 4'x4' pen. Hes regained alot of mobility, but he still drags his shell along the ground instead of standing up. Due to the deformity, his shell is much heavier than it should be for his size. He seems quite happy though.

Obviously Tennessee isn't the right climate for the boys; they live with my ex in Florida. I still get to visit them, as we are on good terms (we're going to MiataworldII together!) I did talk her out of bringing the tortoises, though.

Lesley wrote: Wowak, that is one cute tortoise!!

Yeah, Spike is my crabby but cute baby.

Here in SoFla, we basically live in an open-air zoo with out fences. Anything you can buy in a pet store can be found in the wild, plus our native critters. 20' Pythons are fairly common, monitor lizards far bigger than you ever saw in the PetsMart. Green iguanas up to 6' long. Snakes? We got rattlers,water moccasins, coral snakes, and more. Gators show up in back yards, roads, canals. On several occaisions I have seen gators strolling across the Interstate. Alligator Alley is aptly named. We have a large number of unpleasant two legged imports, too.

Well, at least Celine Dion isn't a Florida resident.

Tell you what, Canucks: you keep her and we won't send gators up there.

They will eventually figure out how to turn a doorknob. We have a deal, right?

They have to have them in Canada. My club rents a track in ny right on the Saint Lawrence river, and the damn things have delayed our events by sunning themselves on the warm track in the morning. Since I can see Canada from the track, I'm assuming at least one has made it that far. We used scrap wood to move them, and boy do they snap.

Now you know what happened to the armadillos,.......the snappers killed them and took over their turf.

I've heard the easiest way to remove snappers is convince them to get into a large cloth bag, maybe one that is wrapped around a box or something.

Trying to handle them is dangerous.

Oh, and I've also heard that bigger turtles like Sulcata, like to push crap around...and sometimes will try to push really large objects (for their size). Is this true Wowak?

I'm on the left coast of Canada.

Just rainforest out here,only the mushrooms are poisonous but the hippies still don't eat enough of the wrong ones :)

I don't think the turtles can cross the rockies.

There are rattlesnakes in the interior but not down here on the coast.

Sorry, we do have hobo spiders and black widows though.

Shawn