Look What I Found in the Driveway

We were heading to Kinder yesterday to meet the family for the Resurrection Sunday meal when something made me stop in my tracks on the driveway.  Tricia asked what I was doing as I got out of the car.  Look what was in the driveway in the middle of the yard.

A snapping turtle!  We recently had 4 inches of rain and the surrounding rice fields and crawfish ponds are good environments for the turtles.  I guess this one was out moving around and decided to come visit.  Turtle soup?  We didn't have time.  I picked him up by the tail to move him into a big bucket.  He was heavy and fat!

When I was farming in Oberlin, we would catch a bunch of them when we were water leveling rice fields.  They were easy to spot, swimming in the muddy water.  We'd get out of the tractor with our boots and wade out and catch them.  I kept the ones that were big enough and would bring them back to the tractor where they would ride with me in the cab until lunch.  You might not know it, but turtles stink!  As they get bigger, they let out a musk smell that is atrocious!  You want to stay far away from that, trust me.

My Dad would bring the turtles we caught to his cousin, named Blanc.  Blanc would clean the turtles and make a turtle gravy over rice.  We'd go over when we knocked off for lunch and eat a big turtle feast.  While not entirely appetizing to look down in the pot and see turtle claws, turtle meat itself is delicious!

This afternoon when I got in from work, I decided to go ahead and let this snapping turtle go.  I picked him up and walked him down to the ditch and set him free.  

I kept my distance from his opened mouth.  That beak he has is sharp and his jaws are powerful.  I bet he could snap off a finger, but I'm not going to test out that theory.  Old-timers say that once they clamp down, they won't let go until thunder rolls.  I'm not going to test the validity of that either.  This turtle wasn't all that big.  If I catch a bigger one, then we'd probably eat him.

The Snapping Turtle On the Pine Island Road

Sunday afternoon we were on a 30 minute drive to my hometown of Kinder, LA.  We bought a lemon tree for my mom and were going to plant it in her yard.  The tree has little lemons, and we hope it makes a ton of 'em.  We turned west in Hathaway and began driving down the Pine Island Highway.  The two-lane road is a lonely stretch, cutting between rice fields and crawfish ponds on the north and south sides of the road.

When we passed by the Thornwell Warehouse Association, there was a large object in the road.  I swerved to avoid it, looked in my rear-view window, and found a place to turn around.  I drove back to the obstruction in the road and got out of the car leaving the car in the road.  Here's what it was:

A big, fat snapping turtle

I carefully picked up the big snapping turtle by the tail.  I held it up to Tricia and the boys.  The big turtle opened his mouth, hissed and let out an awful smell.  You can get some size perspective on the turtle by looking in the photo above and beneath just below the turtle's left front foot.  It is a raccoon track.  This was a big, old turtle!  He was fat, too.  Just look at the fat bulging out from underneath his shell!

Teasing the Turtle

Of course, in the photo above, you can tell that I picked up a stick and teased the turtle into snapping at me.  (You know you would have done the same.)  It is a snapping turtle.  It's what they do.  The old-timers say that if it bites you, they don't let go until it thunders or lightnings.  Don't worry, I don't wish to test the veracity of that theory.

When I was rice-farming, I would catch many big snapping turtles like this when we were water leveling.  I would get out of the tractor, wade out and pick the turtle up and keep it in the cab of the tractor with me until quitting time.  Man, could that thing stink up a tractor!  Then we would bring the turtles to a relative named Blanc.  He was a good cook and he would butcher the turtles and make Snapping Turtle Sauce Piquant.  That is a 'turtle stew' with a red gravy served over white rice.  We would go over to Blanc's house for lunch and he would feed us.  Boy, was it good!

Offering a pardon to the snapping turtle

I thought long and hard about putting the turtle in the trunk of Tricia's car and bringing it home with us and making a turtle sauce piquant for old time's sake.  It would be good eating, for sure.  But it is a lot of work to clean a turtle, and I'm a little short on time right now with work.  Not to mention the fact that it would really stink up the car.  I was jarred out of my ruminations by a truck coming fast down the highway.  I was still parked in the middle of the road with a big turtle by the tail.  I held it up and asked the motorist if he'd like to take the turtle home.  He declined the offer.  I carried the big old turtle to the roadside ditch and deposited him there so that he wouldn't get hit by a car or truck.  I've been responsible for turning many of these guys into sauce piquant.  Maybe it's time to let one get away.

A Very Lucky Snapping Turtle

Someone at work asked me if I ate snapping turtles last week.  I said, "sure."  He told me there was a big one in the ditch right outside the shop.  It has been raining non-stop for two weeks now, so all the ditches are flooded with water.  I walked outside and grabbed a big stick and walked to the ditch.  There was the old snapping turtle on the bottom of the ditch.  The clear rainwater made the snapper easy to see.

I used the stick to pry him off the bottom and slid him up and out of the water.  He was pretty mad and started snapping at the stick with his 'beak-like' mouth.  I was careful to keep my distance as old-timers say that if they bite you, they don't let go until it thunders or lightning strikes.  I wasn't going to test out that theory.

I remembered back when I was farming, I had lots of experience in catching snapping turtles.  Prior to planting rice we would water level all the rice fields.  The best way to describe this practice is to say that it involves dragging a big blade behind a big tractor in a flooded field.  The blade pulls the mud up and rolls it over, turning the mud into a slurry that is pulled round and round in the field.  You do your best to pull the high spots into the low.  Gravity levels the mud so that the portion of field you are in is level and would accept a flood with no high spots.  Kind of hard to explain.

Anyway, this would inevitably unearth big turtles.  You could see them swimming in the water and we would get out of the tractor, wade through the water and grab the turtles by the tail.  I'd bring them into the cab of the tractor and put them on the floor.  Man, would they stink!  Turtles have the ability to emit and nasty smell.  At the end of the day, we'd put them in the back of the truck and bring them to a cousin's house.  You could hear the turtles rustling underneath a bunch of Dr. Pepper cans.  We'd put them in an old freezer in the yard where they would wait until we had gathered enough turtles to eat.  A big turtle sauce piquante (turtle meat cooked in a spicy red gravy) would be cooked and we'd eat it for lunch.  Delicious!  It has been a while since I've eaten turtle sauce piquant.

I was thinking about bringing him home and cooking him, but this is no country turtle.  We work right near a bunch of big chemical plants and that is where this turtle was found.  These turtles can live to be 100 years old.  I have no idea what type of toxins are in his meat and didn't want to take the chance in eating him.  Besides, he's really stink up my car if I tried to take him home.  So, I used the stick to push the old fella back in the ditch instead of taking him home to eat.  He's a lucky turtle!