5:57 a.m. 43 degrees, wind ESE 0 mph. Sky: a painterly sky (at the moment), ribbons, sheets, balls of fluff; a broad brush-stroke of peach and rose, a world ablush . . . but not destined to last long; rain on the horizon; heaven on the verge of ruin. Permanent streams: waiting for rain; upper, slowing down, the wear and tear of summer; lower, water desolate, a single thirsty puddle, last stop on the surface; the bleakness of drought. Wetlands: an emaciated cloud, more haze than mist, mid-tree level. Pond: fog machine, west-bound vapor follows Horace Greeley's advice, west and gone; a pair of hooded mergansers paddle leisurely across the pond, veiled in mist.
A snapping turtle, head, tail, and spiky shell barely break the surface of the pond, an archipelago of antiquity. Turtles are a kind of bird with the governor turned low, wrote Edward Hoagland, in "The Courage of Turtles," a reference to their lethargy (and longevity). In the Hollow, snapping turtles hibernate six or seven months of the year, dreaming turtle dreams tucked beneath a blanket of anoxic mud, either in the main channel of the marsh or in the pond, their pilot lights barely flickering. The ability to endure prolonged exposure to low levels of dissolved oxygen permits snapping turtles to overwinter in sites off-limits to wood turtles, which need much higher levels of dissolved oxygen during dormancy.
As is the case with rattlesnakes, the snapping turtle's reported nature is addled by exaggeration, and no characteristic is more hyperbolized than its bite. When I was a boy, suburban legend claimed that a sizeable hatch-faced snapping turtle—common in streams, sumps, and tidal marshes along Long Island's South Shore—could snap a broom handle in one bite. Years later, I tested the hypothesis, which proofed false.
Snapping turtles, whose jaws are more clamps than guillotines, do occasionally take birds. According to a note in volume 108 of The Wilson's Bulletin, in late summer, when Lake Ontario shallows heat up large mats of filamentous green algae rise off the bottom and drift. Teeming with invertebrates and small fish, the mats are a floating buffet for migratory shorebirds. Snapping turtles, classic ambush predators, lurk beneath the algae; pull hapless lesser yellowlegs through by their feet . . . a fatal interruption for a sandpiper headed to the mudflats of Belize.
A shower of pine cones. A pewee's farewell whistle. Just off the road, a male turkey herds a flock of females and mature chicks through the woods; stops to look at me. I stop to look at him, erect and bulbous, wings waving as though conducting an orchestra; all the members wander off. In a month, when Color engulfs the hills, they'll be under the clothesline, eating acorns; under the feeders, eating sunflower seeds; in the pasture eating numb crickets and grasshoppers . . . a predicable front-yard event that makes shifting seasons appealing.
Unrefrigerated. Treble hook. Gotta proofread more carefully.
11.
The farmer across the road had a large pond.
His son and I saw the turtle - probably 16” +/- in shell length - and we’re mesmerized by its prehistoric, instinct-driven existence.
We poked at it with the broom, trying to either flip it over or push it 12’ into the pond.
I don’t remember how thick the broom handle was, but I clearly remember it ending up instantly in two sections.
Racing ahead to c. 1972, small village of Califon NJ, the South Branch of the Raritan River. Domestic and wild ducks swimming and raising families (some mixed breed). My next-door neighbor considered the ducks “his”.
Frequently ducks, particularly babies,would disappear underwater, dragged down from below by large snappers.
One day “Buddy” told me he was going over to the local store to “get some rotten meat”, which I found worth further inquiry.
He would put chunks of meat the butcher had left purposefully in refrigerated for a few days, onto a large sturdy table hook that was suspended on heavy wire from an empty plastic milk jug. Another, longer wire was attached to heavy weight, maybe several salt water fishing weights.
“When you see the jug moving around in the river, you know you’ve caught a snapper,” Buddy explained.
Back again to Washington PA. C. 1963. My landlady, red-headed Julia Falosk, owner of Julia’s Bar And Grille, standing in her parking lot in a purple print dress, holding a giant snapper in her hand by the tail, shaking it until it’s head and neck extended.
Her other hand moved swiftly, using a cleaver to deftly separate the soup-destined turtle from his lethal head.
Those are my snapper stories.