dragons that call our wetlands home, and today I was going to capture one… the biggest one in this lake… or at least that is what I told myself as I snapped back into reality and realized that my boots had sunk nearly knee-deep in the mud!
“Dang! Stuck again!”
I toppled backwards butt-first and landed on the embankment, and after pulling with all my might, I finally freed my feet enough to stand up. Clunky start, but I dusted myself off and slowly began to creep along the edge of the lake.
Shadows and stealth are what make the snapping turtle so lethal. You see, if you’re a member of an unsuspecting prey species and you are being hunted by a predator who knows how to use the shadows to its advantage… there is a good chance you will become a meal. How does that work, you ask? Well, most prey species feed under the illumination of light, while the shadows keep the predators hidden, allowing them to stalk up stealthily below their prey while staying completely unnoticed. Then as soon as the unsuspecting target gets close to the edge, where the shadows meet the light… SNAAAAP! Dinner is served.
In this scenario, I considered myself the predator and the snapping turtle my prey. Trust me when I say that only an eight-year-old Coyote would have such a thought. Looking back at this experience now, I am pretty sure I was nowhere near predator status in these early adventures. However, the goal was to use golden hour to my advantage when it came to sneaking up on this turtle. In the early evenings snapping turtles move from the deep into shallower waters to hunt along the lake’s edge. I knew that if I found myself in the right place at the right time, I might stand a chance of making a miraculous catch.
How did I know this, you may be asking? Well, I had been down this road several times before. I would spot the giant turtle near the lake’s edge and take a step into the water toward it, the turtle would notice me… and then WHOOSH! In a flurry of webbed feet and disturbed mud, it would disappear into the shadowy depths, and I would be left there contemplating what I did wrong. My stealth tactics were accurate, but what I lacked was the cover of shadows. From beneath the surface, I am certain that the turtle saw a giant towering figure and said to itself, “Oh boy, that looks like trouble! I’m outta here!” This is the scenario that had played out numerous times over the course of this particular summer… but little did I know, today was going to be different.
The sunlight was getting to be the perfect angle; just enough light breaching the surface to illuminate the basin of the lake’s edges, where I could see tadpoles and small fish dancing as I stalked along the sides. I was making my way to the far corner of the lake, a treacherous zone of deep, body-swallowing mud that was topped with tangling pond weeds and a perfect layer of clear water on top; an ideal hunting zone for snapping turtles.
This particular body of water was actually home to several snapping turtles. I knew this because to date I had captured five of them, all of which were average sized, weighing around twenty pounds. Then there was the big one, the one I called Dragon – little did I know that as I was slowly rounding the embankment, I was entering his lair.
Snapping Turtles are territorial, and once a large male has found a plentiful food supply it will guard this area aggressively against encroaching turtles. The Dragon was enormous, and I am willing to bet that no turtle in the lake would ever dare challenge his territorial throne. Good thing for me is that I was not a turtle, although now that I think about it… maybe it would have been wiser not to challenge this mammoth reptile.
My eyes were razor sharp with precision as I scanned the surface of the water looking for a trail of bubbles… a sure sign that a turtle was moving beneath the surface. Nothing. I stood and waited with the warm summer breeze dancing off the ends of my T-shirt; my fingertips twisted the tops of the long grasses as I studied the water with anticipation, the sun barely escaping through the tree branches. I was losing light quickly and so far there was no sign of this ancient creature. I began to walk further around the edge of the lake, when suddenly a small group of bluegill fish darted from beneath the pond weeds and scattered in an incredible panic into deeper water. I stopped dead in my tracks, knowing that one thing and one thing alone can scare a group of fish like that: a snapping turtle.
The bed of weeds was dense, spanning about 15 feet in length, and on my end I couldn’t see a thing. No bubbles, no movement… no visible sign of the turtle. I decided to move a little further ahead and position myself at the far end of the weed bed. If the fish were coming toward me, that meant whatever scared them was also coming in my direction. I was moving as quietly as I could, but my boots sank into the mud and made a suctioning sound with every step I took. It was hard to focus on the water when I was in a constant battle to simply keep my boots on my feet. Each and every step was a muddy challenge until I came to the front end of the weed bed and squinted my eyes into the setting sun.
With the light reflecting off the water, I tilted my head left and right, desperately trying to focus my gaze through the glare on the surface. Something was there. An obscure shape, like a floating rock, right up against the weed bed. As my eyes slowly adjusted I realized that the obscure shape before me was a massive, foot-long tail decorated with algae and covered in spikes that just happened to run straight into the back end of an enormous snapping turtle! THE snapping turtle. This… was… THE DRAGON!
There are moments in your life where time becomes divided into two parts… “before this” and “after this.” I was stuck in a state of limbo, partially because my boots were sinking in mud, but also because my body was paralyzed with fear and excitement. Little did I know that these coming moments would change the direction of my life FOREVER.
With the Dragon less than two feet away from me and his front half tucked under the weed bed, I could definitely see him, but he could not see me. My mind began to race with strategy and anticipation.
“What do I do? What do I do?!?”
I had my shot at catching this turtle – and he was huge… strike that, I mean MASSIVE! As an eight-year-old, I probably stood on the bathroom scale and pushed the needle to about sixty-five pounds, and this turtle would easily top out right around fifty! This was one giant reptile!
By now the sounds of nature had fallen silent; the frogs, the crickets, the wind… everything was still. I carefully and quietly lifted my left leg, my boot sucking at the mud with a gulping sound as it released. I stood on one foot… the turtle had not moved. Holding my breath, I gently stepped deeper into the water, trying not to disturb the environment in any way whatsoever. With the toe of my boot cutting through the water’s surface, my leg submerged and went down deep; well over the rim of my boot. Almost instantly the water flooded in, soaking my foot, and a tar-like ooze soon followed, turning my sock black.
“Oh boy, Mom is gonna make me
throw out this pair of socks for sure… but who cares! This is the Dragon… this is my moment!”
I was now less than a foot from the reptile – it was within arm’s reach. I could feel beads of sweat running down my face as the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. My heart was in maximum overdrive, and its beats echoed in my eardrums. I began to lean down toward the water, and then… the turtle moved. Not a lot, just a little, but it was very slowly beginning to turn. The reptile was hunting, and I prayed that I had not just
