I saw a 50 lb one snap a broom handle in two like it was a toothpick.
I’ll never forget my 80 pound 5’ tall neighbor coming to my rescue to get a snapping turtle out of my yard. She came over, grab that sucker, put it in a cooler and we took it to the creek near us. She passed last November and I truly miss her. She was one of a kind......animal lover and dear friend.....RIP Sue
When I was 16, my family moved up to Massachusetts. Within a few weeks of arriving, I met a kid and we became friends. He took me to a lake one day, and we went swimming...I had a ball. I had spent most of my life in the ocean around Navy bases, and didn’t do a lot of swimming in fresh water, so it was different and fun.
There were two small lakes separated by a causeway with a road, and there was a big pipe connecting the two probably six feet wide that you could swim through and come out the other side in a different lake. I don’t know why, but it seemed novel and fun!
I am so nearsighted I cannot see pretty much anything, but given that I wore those old military issue black plastic BCD (Birth Control Device) glasses which I had no way to keep from losing, I had to take them off when I went swimming.
As we got out, I saw a bunch of rocks nearby when I put my glasses on, and I said “Hey, I didn’t see those rocks there...I didn’t think it was that shallow!” and he said “What rocks?” When I pointed to them, he said “Oh man, those are snappers! I didn’t know they had them here!”
Damned if they weren’t a group of huge snapping turtles that looked as big as hubcaps!
I never went swimming in that lake again, and that has been nearly 45 years now! All I can think of every time I remember that is the Chuck Berry song...
“One day swimming cross turtle creek, man, them snappers all around my feet...sure was hard swimmin’ cross that thing, with both hands holdin’ my ding-a-ling-a-ling!”
“I saw a 50 lb one snap a broom handle in two like it was a toothpick.”
Grew up in South Louisiana. A 100 pound logger head turtle is to be respected. Yes they do get that big and sometimes bigger. They can take your arm off.