All Creatures, Great and Small

Hubby and I stopped at our favorite watering hole after work today for a few BEvERageS. Since Hubby was on the motorcycle, we did a fairly good job of regulating ourselves and actually made it home as the sun was setting. As I'm a completely paranoid individual, I insisted on tailing Hubby the whole way home to make sure no psychos tried to kill him with their cars. As Hubby was turning onto our street, I could see some shapeless object in the middle of the road, and a bunch of teenagers trying to pick up the misshapen thing. Just as Hubby swung the bike's headlight over the thing, I saw it lunge forward and realized it was a huge turtle! Hubby continued on down the street to our house, but I pulled the Sleigh over to try to rescue the poor stupid thing. Turns out it was a Snapping Turtle, so rescue was at the risk of digits, but the teens and I managed to get the critter in the back of my car.

I figured that since we have a field and a gas pipeline behind our house, we could let him got behind our fence. As I was pulling into our driveway, Hubby was calling me to tell me to stop and protect the turtle, which he'd seen driving past it, until he could get there to help. :-) Great minds think alike! Since neither Hubby or I is a reptile expert (though we have previously saved a Red-Eared Slider water turtle from getting squished on NASA Road One), we called my father-in-law, a biologist who comes in VERY handy sometimes! (Love you Dad!)

Turns out our little Snapper would much rather live out life in a pond than a field, so we took him to the man-made "pond" in the subdivision behind us. Hubby couldn't resist making fun of the poor guy a little. Can't you just imagine the turtle talking to Hubby with a Hannibal Lechter-esque voice? "Come closer! I'll eat your face with a nice Chianti and some fava beans!!" ;-)"I eat yer face!!! Come closer!!!!!"

So, after a nice, short adventure for the turtle, we were able to release him back into the "wild" we know as suburban Houston. God speed little guy!!
Of course, as you can see from the pics, there was nothing "little" about the thing! He was at least 15 lbs! At any rate, Good Luck Critter! Hope you find a lady snapping turtle and live Happily Ever After!