My parents taught me early that turtles should be rescued off of roads.
My father loved to drive.
So much so that his next older brother and he compared odometer readings and monthly mileage totals on a regular basis.
Needless to say, but I'll say it anyway, we had lots of family turtle rescue time together.
And even though I personally am not crazy about driving, I taught my children to rescue turtles too.
Turtles are not slow moving road targets and there are no points given for roadkill, so it is often neccessary to speed up the road crossing process just because.
I have even blogged about it before.
See: s l o w l y...I... g e t...i t.
Here in the country we either have LOTS of extra wildlife that don't understand traffic and death or we have a lot of heartless people who go out of the way to run over critters that wander on to or get to close to the road.
My husband once saw a truck purposefully veer over to the edge of the road to hit a puppy.
Maybe there is a tenth level of hell for people like that.
Now don't get me wrong, I have accidentally hit some wildlife that I just didn't see or just couldn't avoid due to traffic and it ruins your whole day, week, decade, life.
You think of 'it' now and again and get that same nauseous, creeped out, pale, parched feeling in your bones.
The 'what have I done' somberness takes over no matter when it happened.
Yuck.
How did I get to this dark place so quickly??
Sheesh.
Anyway...
We are Turtle Rescuers!
Happiness!
So to celebrate the ability to give a little something back to the crumbling eco-system I thought I would share a video a friend took of my son rescuing a SNAPPING turtle.
Yes, you read me correctly.
Not some cute little box turtle, a LARGE, HEAVY, GRUMPY, SNAPPY snapping turtle.
The turtle in this video might have been trying to commit suicide it was so mad, but my son would not let it become a spot in the road.
A turtle hero to some....
Please enjoy.
Not the usual turtle rescue, but a documented turtle rescue.
Such a brave, brave human.
Such a big, BIG turtle.
But a turtle of any size or kind is still a turtle.
Thanks for being here.
I thank you and turtles thank you.
P.S. For those with sensitive ears there is a human swear near the end. The turtle was most probably cussing too, like crazy highway reptiles do, but many Americans can't speak turtle so I did not feel the need to warn you of that. :)
