I'm still trying to answer that question, because, in the last week, I've seen four–count'em, four–turtles crossing roads (or thinking about it).

Interestingly enough, in each case, I made my Music Man pull over the car so I could get out and save my hard-shelled friend…and at least one other car stopped also.

I think turtles are cool…I don't mind picking them up or otherwise petting/touching them. Same with frogs, toads, crawfish…even snakes. (Keep the arachnoids away from me, however. Far away. Those scenes in The Lord of the Rings, and reading about Aragog in Harry Potter….nightmare fodder. Definitely nightmare fodder for me!)

Anyway, the cool thing about these turtles is that only one of the four was a common painted turtle (which also, coincidentally, was the only one I actually picked up and rescued). I took him/her (I'm guessing these all happen to be females, getting ready to lay their eggs, but I haven't done the research yet to find out if that's why they're all on the move) off the road and carried her down into a swampy ravine nearby–in my heels, thankyouverymuch, because we were coming from church on a Sunday afternoon.

That wasn't the first turtle I'd seen in this epidemic of Turtle Migrators, however. The first one I saw I passed on a two-lane highway on my way to pick up my Music Man, and the turtle was on the other side of the road, so on the way back, I stopped. So did two other cars who had also seen her. This was a turtle I'd never seen before–a soft-shell with a pointy nose. Her shell was leathery, and she must have been a few years old because she had a light dusting of moss growing on her shell. Another gentleman stopped and picked her up to rescue her (I was a leetle bit leery of that pointy nose….so I watched). 

We found little indentations where she might have been getting ready to bury her eggs, but since they were so close to the highway, we thought it best if she were moved.

The next day, I walked outside with my daughter and we saw this big old turtle standing in the back of our neighbors' yard. Fascinated, we walked over (after hooking up the dog) and, from a safe distance, saw that it was a snapper! He had moss growing all over his shell, and he was probably at least a foot in diameter. He didn't hang around, though…he lumbered across the yard and slid into the lake and that was the end of that….or so we thought. (I was kicking myself for not running in the house to find a camera!).

Two days later, we were driving down the road by our house and what should we find in the middle of the road…but a big old snapper. Had to be the same one (I don't like to think that there are more than one snapping turtle of that size in our little itty bitty lake). He was crossing the road (in the wrong direction, though, so maybe it was a different turtle) and my same daughter and I clambered out of the car.

I had no intention of picking up that snapper, but I thought I might be able to sort of prod him into walking across the road if I used a stick. I didn't want him to get flattened.

At the same time, though, another car stopped and a youngish man got out. He warned us to stay back, and sure enough…when he touched the back of the turtle's shell, that baby whipped her head out and around and snapped those jaws, fast and hard.

He seemed to know what he was doing, because he did that a few more times, always avoiding those snapping jaws, and finally was able to pick up the big guy, who at last retracted his head, and carry him to safety.

Whew.

So…what about you? Do you like turtles, frogs, toads, lizards? What about snakes? Did you like to catch them when you were younger? (Let's not talk about spiders, okay?)

Confession Time: When I was young, I used to catch teeny tiny little toads–no bigger than the size of a grown man's thumbnail. They were so, so, so cute! Anyway, I would make a little home for them in a tin coffee can, complete with grass….and I would leave them in the can. And then I would find them later in the day, or the next…and the poor things would be fried into little crispy critters in the hot, metal coffee can.

Poor things. I still have nightmares about those poor little things. Maybe that's why I'm on such a crusade today to save their larger, bigger cousins!