I’ve saved two of these magnificent beasts from individual extinction down here in South Florida.
The first one was when I was out on a friends boat in the Everglades and we saw something struggling in a patch of floating water weeds. We couldn’t tell for sure what it was since it was obscured by the weeds, but as we got closer we saw a thin white rope. I reached over and slowly started pulling the rope up, feeling that there was something considerably heavy on the other end. Finally, when I got to the end of the rope, a turtle emerged tangled in weeds and rope, with the hook at the end of the rope straight through it’s considerable snout. Now, I had seen alligator snapping turtles before, but never before had I seen one this up close and personal and never before had I seen one THIS FRIGGIN BIG!!!
After considerable debate concerning the safety of our digits, we decided that YES we were going to help this turtle out, and NO we weren’t just gonna cut the line and leave him with the large hook in it’s mouth. Somehow, I was defaulted into the position of the hook-getter-outter. Finally I decided that the safest way to go about it was to make sure that the turtles neck was already extended so that it could not demonstrate it’s snapping abilities on me. This was accomplished by handing the line to my buddy who pulled it so that the turtle was hanging off the side of the boat. First I cut the barbed end of the hook off, making sure to try to make the cut as close to the turtles snout as possible. Then I cut the other end off and the turtle splashed into the water and vigorously swam off. The little bit of hook that he had left in his mouth almost surely fell out immediately and he looked no worse for the wear. My guess is that someone was catfishing, and unwittingly caught a turtle. If in fact they were turtle fishing and I spoiled their dinner, then I still don’t care because it sure felt like the right thing to do.
Speaking of spoiling people’s dinner, the second turtle I saved was definately bound for someone’s kitchen. This one I found at my place of work on a Saturday afternoon here in the middle of Fort Lauderdale. I went outside for a smoke and was walking around the building, and I noticed a plastic garbage can near the dumpster. Because of the bright sunlight I noticed that there was motion in there and upon closer inspection I found a medium sized, very much alive, alligator snapping turtle. It was struggling around a lot more then the turtle on the hook, probably because it had been on blacktop pavement in the HOT south Florida sun and the water was beginning to get very warm. I was livid that someone would capture an animal in that manner and leave it there to die a slow cruel death instead of at the very least taking it out of it’s misery. I dragged the can over to the side of the canal that ran right in front of the building and I tipped it over. When the turtle came to a stop right before the edge of the water to take a look around, it appeared to quickly calm down. A moment before it had been struggling hard in the garbage can full of water, but now that it was out of there, it seemed like it realized that it was out of danger. Either that, or it was trying to slowly cool off instead of going straight into the water.
So, do those two good deeds make up for all the little garden lizards I used to shoot with my BB gun when I was a little kid?