May 22, 2010

Buster's Turtle

Buster is getting to be a pretty old dog,
so I didn't think much of the fact that he didn't move
the entire hour my brother Joe and I
were playing volleyball.

Until I noticed the thing sitting next to him.
It kind of resembled a rock.

A rock with a long neck and beady eyes.

We get at least one of these slow-moving visitors every year.
If the creek gets too high,
they cross the road and head for our flooded woods.
Unfortunately for him...
there is a fence in the way.

Buster sat nearby and studied his new little friend,
while Joe ran to get a shovel...

For those of you that have never run across one of
these guys, he's a snapping turtle, and he has the
potential to be very painful.
This dude was made to chomp fingers off,
and we could see he was perfectly willing to follow through,
though I think he would have settled for
Buster's tongue if he got any closer...
They don't usually let go once they clamp down...

So, Joe scooped him up in the shovel.
(Our snapping-turtle transportation method of choice.)

And after a parting shot,

and a parting duet...

Mr. Turtle was safely delivered to his destination.

He thinks he will take the shovel more often;
you wouldn't believe how much faster it was.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

That's so funny! I have bad luck with turtles. One time, we found this HUGE turtle (so I thought) in the parking lot of my friend's church, so we took it to the back of her pastor's house and I threw it in the pond. Well, it was only afterward that someone pointed out that it might have been a tortoise. Oops.

Laura Lee said...

You don't live in the south, do you? Because here, our (oh so nice) southern daddy's (and brothers) prefer to dispose of those creatures with 'high velocity lead poisining' aka: Annie get your gun!

Tell your brother that I respect his kindness. :)

Xx

-Laura

Kate said...

Yeah, I know - but Buster wouldn't hear of it.

Kate said...

Oh by the way Sara, I had a similar experience with a toad once... (No, not a frog...) :)