Monday, June 29, 2009

Nature Can Be Sooo Cruel- Wishbones



BTW,
ALL birds have WISHBONES so Mr. Heron has been caught in a lie...
but then again can we really blame him for trying to save his NECK?

I have been thinking about dead animals lately mostly due to my personal experience of running over a beautiful 5 ft. black snake sunning himself on the road the other day. I thought he was a patched crack in the road and at the last second realized that I was running over a snake with my mammoth vehicle. Ouuuuchhhhhh! Oh the misery of meeting your end while blissfully sunning yourself. I thought about stopping, but then what? Rush him to the vet? Is there a place to take these poor suffering snakes? I thought about perhaps just moving him off the road but was afraid that he would bite me if still alive. I screamed and cried all the way to my Core Class which is where I was headed in the first place. I hoped there was a chance that I had missed his vital organs and that after some rest he would be fine. But I am sure animals don't recover from these things and he probably slinked off into the grass to die. Wow, nature can be so cruel!
The next time I went to Core Class I drove very observantly and with my music a bit less blaring. Being AWARE I decided would be the best way I could make it up to that poor snake. Then as I was driving home after class wouldn't you know it but there walking lazily down the middle of the road was a big old snapping turtle. She was huge and dirty and really had no clue of the impending danger she was in. Here was my chance to make up for hitting Mr. Snakey, but how? I had no idea about the dexterity of snapping turtles and whether they were capable of whipping around and snapping you. So at that point I was not sure if my desire to help her was greater then my fear of her. There was also the chance that I would end up as "Road Kill" myself if I didn't do something quick being that it was late and we were on a very curvy country road. I tried to nudge her with my foot, but she would not budge. I yelled at her to move but she just looked at me. I lifted her tail end with my foot which made her really mad and her head began to jut in and out of her shell furiously, each jut ending with a snapping sound. After hearing those SNAPS I determined that I would try to move her without picking her up. I returned to my truck to retrieve something, anything that I could move her with. At this point I really did not want to touch her. I could just picture myself in Emergency holding my detached finger with all the hospital staff berating me that everyone knows you don't pick-up a snapping turtle, especially one big enough to bite your finger off. So as I returned to my vehicle I suppose I was hoping to find a "Snapping Turtle Removal Kit" in the trunk. I did find a cardboard box there but determined I would have to lift her into it which defeated the no touch option. I searched the back and front seats and all I found was my daughters sweater. Alas that would have to do. As I returned to Mrs. Snapper I could not believe what I was about to do. Somehow I thought screaming may help so I began screaming at the top of my lungs as I picked her up with my daughter's sweater wrapped around my hands. Now what? I was in the middle of the road sceaming and holding a big old snapping turtle with her head jutting in and out violently snapping at me and I could not decide which side to put her on? The lake was on one side but I believe she was heading away from the lake to lay her eggs so I put here down there in the brush. I drove away hoping I hadn't done more harm then good. It truely is amazing how all these wild creatures survive and thrive year after year despite us humans. Nature can be cruel but it can also be quite amazing.
BTW, I never did tell my daughter that I used her sweater to lift a big, old stinky snapping turtle...and I probably never will.

3 comments:

rhiannon said...

you used my sweater? which one?

Eliza Ralph-Murphy said...

the stinky one!

Eliza Ralph-Murphy said...

I forgot 9 year olds can read. Darn!!