Life on the Farm...with Turtles

I was fixing the bird netting over the strawberries today.

At one point I looked down and saw a large snapping turtle, in the open field of soil next to me, who had dug her way into the dirt. She was pretty well camouflaged. I wasn't sure she was alive.

Maybe she got hurt by a tractor that didn't know she was there, I thought. Thankfully, all of her body parts were intact. And, then I saw her eyes blink. She was alive!

I called Dave over to see what we could do to relocate her to the nearby pond that she must have come out of. We dug her up and tried to nudge her into an open wooden crate. She was not happy about this. We tried to pick her up, but we were a bit nervous of her potential to snap at us.

I suggested maybe we could pick her up with a big shovel-grabbing the dirt underneath her. As Dave went to get the shovel, he told our new crew members, Forest and Jayde, about the turtle. Come to find out that Forest is a turtle wrangler! Well, that's what I called him.

He knew just how to pick her up--and told us that she was very likely a pregnant mother looking to lay her eggs somewhere. She was getting dangerously close to being too dry. So, Forest carefully carried her over to the nearest pond at the side of our farm, and gently lowered her into the water. Yay!

How wonderful to have fellow nature lovers as our new crew members. Thanks Forest!