Turtles, Turtles, and More Turtles!

Yesterday, while I was walking around the pond, I saw a young pond slider sitting in the reeds! As I moved closer, the baby turtle slipped into the water and disappeared. I stepped along, and soon saw the small turtle in the middle of the pond swimming around. I thought back to how fun it was raising my three yearling pond sliders last summer and decided to try to catch this water reptile. I went away from the pond for a few minutes, to give the turtle some time to climb out of the water and start basking. Then I took a container and headed back out to the pond.

Like I thought it would, after seeing me coming, the turtle quickly slipped into the water, and began swimming away. I ran toward the reptile, with my rake and began raking through the water trying to pull it back toward land. The turtle ended up getting away, and after a while Jonah came out to see what I was doing. I told him what happened, and he suggested we rake along the edge. We took turns raking, and while I rested and Jonah took his turn, I spotted something that looked like a moving rock. Taking a closer look, I saw that it was a baby snapping turtle! Since it was just a little one, I was not afraid of it snapping me, so I picked it up and showed Jonah. Last year I kept a baby snapping turtle for a while, and I decided to keep this turtle for a while also.

I fixed up a place for the new creature at Critter Corner, and then went out to find some food for it. 

Snapping turtles eat fish, frogs, insects, and water bugs. I caught a small frog and put it in with my turtle and walked away. A few minutes later, when I went back to check, the frog was gone! I put in another frog, but this time stayed and watched as the snapping turtle quickly devoured the frog! I was happy to know that the snapping turtle liked frogs. They are easy to catch.

A few years ago, we captured a full-grown snapping turtle at the creek and took it to the house where we kept and fed it lots of frogs. Then one day we cut it up and ate it! Mmm, it was good! It will take a year or so before this snapping turtle is full grown, but we might eat it someday.

~Samuel