Common Snapping Turtles And Their Quirks

Newly Hatched Common Snapping Turtle--Photo By Roger D. Hicks

Yesterday, June 9, 2018, while mowing grass in an area of my yard that I sometimes let get a bit rough, and wild, I uncovered a newly hatched, but dead, Common Snapping Turtle.  In more than twenty-five years of living in this house, this is the second occasion on which I have found baby snapping turtles in roughly that same section of the yard.  The first occasion was more than twenty years ago when I found several live, newly hatched Common Snapping Turtles in that area.  As you can see by the photograph above, a newly hatched Common Snapping Turtle is only slightly larger in diameter than a quarter and my wedding band.  At this stage and size, immediately upon hatching they are totally independent and self sufficient. For the first few weeks of their lives they will subsist on insects, worms, and possibly even some vegetation.  But don't let their need to hatch and survive on their own lead you to jump to the conclusion that a female Common Snapping Turtle, or any other female turtle, has no maternal instincts.  

My entire yard looks down on the roof of an abandoned house owned by a neighboring farmer and that house has never been flooded.  My yard sits about thirty or forty vertical feet above the level of Big Spring Branch and White Oak Creek at their confluence.  The edge of my yard is a rocky bluff which overlooks the state highway on which I live.  My driveway drops straight off the edge of the bluff to the highway and I have actually fallen on it once near the top while shoveling snow in winter and slid on my back all the way down its ice covered surface to the highway.  To say the least it is steep and I do not necessarily believe that a female turtle would be likely to travel straight up the paved driveway to the yard which is the only relatively easy way for an animal to make the trip.  Admittedly, there is a bit of a game trail up and over the bluff, through the brush and timber which I let grow there for privacy.  But for a reptile with short little legs and a hard shell that is not a walk in the park or a swift swim on White Oak Creek.  It is a long trudge of at least two hundred feet up a creek bank, across a paved state highway, and up a brushy, rocky bank to lay twenty to forty eggs which she will cover with dirt, grass, and leaves, and never see again.  The effort involved in traveling to my yard, laying and covering eggs, and making the return trip to the creek belies the belief that turtles have no maternal instincts.  The female turtles who have laid eggs in my yard have gone a long way to find a safe, dry place for their nests well above the water line.  We are talking about a reptile which lives primarily in the waters of small creeks and near their shores and I live in a house where I have never bought flood insurance.  In fact, my banks, when I was paying a mortgage, did not require me to have flood insurance.  

Adult Common Snapping Turtle Photo by naturealmanac.com

I mentioned in a post on Facebook earlier this spring that I had saved a presumably female Red Eared Slider turtle on US Highway 460 in Magoffin County Kentucky a few miles from my home.  At the time, I assumed she too was heading somewhere to lay her eggs.  Over the years, I have found many Common Snapping Turtles on highways all across the Eastern United States.  In the majority of those cases, they are females hunting a place to lay eggs.  However, there are times when they will make such moves to find a better food source or to escape a drying water source.  But, the bottom line is this: do not be surprised if you find a female, water dwelling turtle in a spot that is high and dry.