This is a box turtle, cute no? I was planning on putting my little box turtle pal in the car and driving him to safety where I might feed him some lettuce and enjoy his cute box-turtleness. Instead, as I rounded the car I saw this:
It may be difficult to tell the size from this photo, but I was trying to rescue a 35 pound dinosaur also known as the common snapping turtle. That was rearing up and snapping at me. I have never been so scared of a turtle in my entire life. Seriously folks, it was traumatic. I actually debated if I should try and pick it up because (although this thing appears to have mighty survival instincts given that it's been around since the jurassic period) it was heading straight into traffic. Luckily, my survival instincts kicked in (and my love for all ten of my chubby little fingers) and I got back in my car. I waited until the dino-turtle decided to head back from where he came (the rain forest? seriously where did this thing come from in an office park in the suburbs?) and out of impending danger.
When I got back to the office, Wikipedia gave me the following information "Common snappers have long tails with spiky protrusions, as well as long flexible necks which can reach one-half to two-thirds of the length of their shells, making handling dangerous. They cannot fully retract their head and appendages, relying on fierce displays when aggravated. Their snapping jaws and sharp claws are capable of inflicting serious injury up to and including amputation of digits."
On this matter, Wikipedia seems to be completely accurate.
