Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 152, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 June 1915 — The SNAPPING TURTLE [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

The SNAPPING TURTLE

By CHARLES MACNAMARA

SN that part of the Ottawa valley where 1 live only two species of chelonia are found —the painted turtle (Chrysemys picta), popularly known as the "mud turtle.” and the snapping turtle (Chelydra serpentina). Both are entirely aquatic in their habits and rarely leave the water except to lay their eggs. The painted turtle Is the more abundant and. from its custom of crawling out on logs and rocks to sun itself, is much oftener seen, and consequently better known than the '‘snapper,” which, though it exists tn far larger numbers than is generally suspected, evidently finds concealment best suited to its predacious mode of life. In its business it does not pay to advertise. The snapping turtle has a very expensive range, being found over the whole of the United States east of the Rockies, and as far south as Ecuador, while to the north it extends probably to 50 degrees north latitude. It grows much larger than its “painted” brother, specimens with a carapace length of two feet being sometimes taken. Besides its strong, thick tail, its chief characteristic is its long neck, which It can dart out with astonishing rapidity to seise Its prey or attack an enemy. and from this it gains its popular name. Its powerful jaws, though toothless, are bony and sharp, and are capable of Inflicting a serious wound on the careless captor. The carapace of the adult animal is composed of smooth, well defined, greenish brown plates. The plastron and under parts of the animal are yellowish. Very old individuals evidently lead sedentary lives, and thus avoid the proverbial opprobrium of the “rolling stone,” for their shells are often thickly coated with moss. -

On land they can walk briskly enough on their long legs, but the water is their real element, and they swim easily and well, although, of course, their lines are not designed for speed, and they can remain submerged for long periods. As the “snapper” Is well able, and always more than willing, to take a strong offensive —ever the best means >of defense —it does not stand in need of a capacious shell, like many of its milder-mannered relatives, into which to retire out of harm’s way. Consequently Its carapace scarcely covers its retracted head and folded tail, while its cruciform plastron i 6 narrow and small, and leaves the under parts practically undefended. The animal generally has a very unpleasant, musty smell, and always exhibits a most savage temper. Its favorite habitat is small, sluggish streams and swamps, where it lies concealed in the mud and weeds, darting out its long neck to seize its food. It is purely carnivorous in its diet, and destroys large numbers of fish and, when it can get them, young waterfowl. On this account we must class it as a decidedly injurious animal, although in some places it is regularly used for food, and is said to be often seen on sale in the markets of the southern United States.

About the middle of June the females leave the water at night to deposit their eggs. They crawl out on some sandy beach and scrape shallow, saucer-shaped depressions in the loose, dry surface sand in order to reach the firmer layer of damp sand beneath. On the beach I examined, these depressions were about six inches deep by fourteen or fifteen inches in diameter. The turtles seem to be rather fastidious in their choice of a site, for they always make a number of these hollows before finally tunneling into the damp sand. The tunnel, which is the actual egg receptacle, is an oval section about three inches by four inches, and slopes at an angle of 20 or 30 degrees into the damp sand to a depth of four or five inches. The eggs, which just abo tit fill this tunnel, are all deposited at the same time, and the sand scraped over them again and roughly heaped up. When the “nest” is the bottom of the tunnel is about ten inches from the surface. The eggs of nearly all the .other chelonia are oval In outline, but * Ki

those of the snapping turtle are perfectly round. They are Just about one inch in diameter and have a stiff, parchmentlike shell of a creamy white or pinkish color. A friend tells me that he has eaten them as a boy, and to the omnivorous appetite of youth they were very well flavored. Although the dawn of motherly affection is to be seen in animals much lower in the scale of life than the snapping turtle, these latter are entirely devoid of the maternal instinct, and after depositing their eggs they leave them to be hatched oat by the heat of the sun, and take no further interest in them whatever.

Three nests that I examined, and for observation purposes designated Nos. 1, 2 and 3, contained 31, 45 and 49 eggs respectively. Another nest. No. 4, was found later to contain none but infertile eggs. The eggs in nest No. 1 were deposited during the ,night of June 11-12, the others between June 13 and June 16. The development of the young is slow. On July 30 the embryos in nest No. 1 were perfectly formed, but were small and quite colorless except for the dark eye spots. By August 19 they had assumed the black coloration peculiar to the immature young, but there was still a quantity of the yolk of the egg to be absorbed. On September 8 the yolk was nearly all gone, and on September 12 the young were out of the shell's—an incubation period of exactly three months. They all, however, remained buried in the sand, and those I dug up began to burrow again as soon as I laid them down. They were thickly smeared with egg matter and damp sand, but when washed clean appeared as stout little jet black creatures, with ridged and tubercled carapaces about one and a quarter inches long, and quite soft as yet. When their heads were drawn In they looked remarkably like large pickled walnuts. They seemed to be ignorant of the “Kultur” practiced by their elders and made no attempt to bite. A couple of them I brought home could not be induced to eat anything and persisted in burying themselves in the da&p sand with which their box was provided. Nest No. 2 hatched out about September 23, but about one-third of the eggs were infertile. As in the case of nest No. 1, the young made no attempt to leave the sand, and it seemed evident that they intended to spend the winter there, for on September 24 the young of nest No. 1, hatched twelve days before, were still buried. As the thermometer not infrequently goes down to 30 degrees below xero here, I was looking forward with interest to see how the young turtles would stand the intense winter cold, for they were certainly not below the frost line; but at this point my investigations were arrested. In July and August I had several times noticed skunk tracks on the beach, and knowing the marauding habits of this animal I felt somewhat uneasy for my turtle eggs. But at this time they escaped, for there was no visible mark on the surface of the sand to reveal the position of the nests, and before the young emerge the unbroken eggs have no smell that could give the skunk a clue. But when the young come out they have a strong odor that quickly betrays them to the enemy, even through six inches or one foot of covering sand. And so on September 25 a skunk discovered nest, No. 1 and ate all the young turtles. The raider also ate all the infertile eggs of nest No. 4, and dug up and destroyed two other nests near by, which I had not known of before.

About October 5 nest No. 2 suffered a like fate. There mmm, still remained nest No. 3, which was B&lffll&pSpU some distance away from th- Others. HHP October 6 on * y three young had emerged from this nest; two or three a ' shell, 12 eggs were addled, and insects had attacked others, and the shells were full of small white maggots. But 27 eggs were apparently good, and just on the point of hatching. But some time between the sixth and the eleventh a skunk found this nest also, and ate everything in it —live turtles, dead and decaying turtles, unhatcbed eggs, addled eggs and maggots. It must be admitted that the skunk seems to lack those discrifninating niceties of taste that mark the true epicure. Thus of the six nests on this beach, containing probably 250 eggs, not a single young turtle survived to reach the water, and if any of them had escaped the land risks, no doubt another set of dangers awaited them in the stream. However, any large increase in the “snapper” population would mean the annihilation of all forms of aquatic life, and in view of their destructive habits and their singularly unattractive personality, we can contemplate their fate with small regret.