Tag: Snapping Turtles

When It Rains

On By trashonthemonocacyIn Monocacy River, Nature3 Comments

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When the Monocacy overflows its banks, my oldest son pulls on his waders, mounts his bike, and speeds to the river, frantic lest he miss a moment of the spectacle, but, as he apparently needs someone with whom to share the wonder (and, amazingly, his active Instagram account doesn’t seem to count), he even more frantically insists that I come along. Secretly grateful to be wanted for something other than a ride to the airport, I follow along, prodded by the intermittent “hurry up!”s made necessary by my bikeless status. Someone, after all, needs to hold the dog’s leash and stash her poop bags, not to mention stop to clean up once in a while.

I haven’t looked at any flood charts, but my son and I reckon that this week the river was the highest it’s been since a stretch of rainy days in March 2014. While the “island” wasn’t  completely underwater, as we have seen in the past, it was shrunken by the swollen waters. The bluebells had become aquatic flowers, and flotillas of logs, branches, leaf debris and trash (I could make out plastic bottles, the distinctive red of a coke can, and the occasional flash of artificial color) drifted by at a frantic pace. A pair of darting swallows and the voice of a nearby kingfisher made me wonder about the other animals, not lucky enough to have wings, whose holes and homes were now underwater.

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Err,um, could you like, maybe, give us a lift?

And I do mean to include those animals with more than two or four feet, like this rather unfortunate spider and possibly doomed caterpillar. Honestly, it’s been a rough spring for the insects and arachnids, in pupal form or otherwise, what with the snow and lingering cold. And now this? Bother.

Not far into our explorations, we encountered a very large snapping turtle that certainly didn’t mind the extra water. My son poked it with a stick (of course), which provoked it into an aggressive hiss, which, in turn, provoked our Rosie-pup into lunging after it in our defense. Knowing that she would lose that battle, I held tight to the leash and suffered her whimpering frustration as the beast disappeared into the muddy depths.

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The snapping turtle is here somewhere: trust me.

Next week: cleaning it all up.

(No) Pets on the Monocacy

On By trashonthemonocacyIn Children, Wildlife1 Comment

Painted Turtles, big and small American Toads, baby crayfish, Eastern Snapping Turtles: if my boys can see them, they can get their hands on them. So can I, of course, but most of the time I’m pleading for their release, because, one, we don’t need another pet and, two, wild things need to live in the wild. I was acquisitive of animals as a child, too, which is why I know that healthy wild things seldom thrive once put in a tank or a cage. The frogs and toads get away only to be found months later petrified at the back of a closet. The turtles eat your hamburger but look so morose that eventually you just have to put them back where you found them. And the crayfish? Either something in the fish tank eats them, or they eat something in the fish tank. I’m happy to say that I never took a Snapping Turtle home. My brothers were once attacked by one in a lily pond, and that settled the issue.

A few weeks ago, my boys caught a baby rabbit that was living in one of my flower beds. It was small, clearly just out of the nest, and rather stupid about just allowing itself to be handled. (Well, maybe more naive than stupid). I had the boys release it across the street, but it reappeared in the backyard a short time later, and, without telling me, my oldest put it in the cage with his two friendly pet rats, Sugar and Anastasia. Thrilled to see the maiden rats treat the rabbit as if it was their own long lost child, my son called me up from the garage, which I was cleaning, to his room to see a “surprise.” This is what I found:

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Yes, indeed, that is Anastasia grooming the rabbit. As you can imagine, it was very difficult to convince the boys that this situation, while adorable, was not actually good for the health of any of the animals involved. In the end, however, it wasn’t the boys that gave me trouble. They agreed to release the baby rabbit across the street again, but the baby rabbit had other ideas. Within minutes of being let go, it hopped right into the garage, where I was still cleaning, and up to the back door.

“Oh my God,” my husband said, “did it imprint on us?”

“I guess it liked being mothered,” I replied.

I am pleased to say that, no, despite the baby rabbit’s apparent desires, we don’t presently have a rabbit living with our rats.  It took several more tries, but it finally stayed away when we made sure that it noticed that we have two dogs and a cat living in our house in addition to our two affectionate rodents. It’s now living underneath a hedge two houses away.  In the wild.

When There Are No Pictures

On By trashonthemonocacyIn Modern Life, Monocacy RiverLeave a comment

Yesterday, while reconfiguring a temporary (and mostly imaginary) dam, my oldest boy discovered a snapping turtle under a rock.  Normally this would call for some panicked maternal shrieking – PUT THAT THING DOWN! – but the snapper was a baby, no bigger than my hand, and apparently too stunned to move. Nonetheless, my son, demonstrating an uncharacteristic streak of self-preservation, quickly threw the thing back in the water. “Wait!” I called out, too late, “I wanted a picture!” My son looked at me, then at the water, still rippling from the snapper’s entrance, then back at me. He didn’t have to say, “Are you crazy?  Those things bite!” His incredulous, clearly-I’m-smarter-than-you-mom teenage expression rendered such words self-evident.  Still, I felt in my pocket, grabbing for my phone, as I scuttled down the bank toward the river.  But there was no phone. No camera. Opportunity missed. Damn. I suffered the same frustration a few minutes later, when my boots left lovely prints in the carpet of bright green celandine leaves on the island, and again, only a few minutes after that, when I found the remnants of the nastiest picnic I’ve yet encountered: an empty 2-liter bottle of Strawberry Fanta accompanied by an also empty 2-pack of fruit punch flavored cigarellos. I could only imagine the hyped-up, nerveless state that such a combination of caffeine, sugar, nicotine, and artificial color and flavor would knock into a person.

In fact, I haven’t had this constant access to a camera for very long.  I got my first smart phone only a few months ago, after I lost my old flip phone somewhere at JFK airport on the way home from visiting my sister (whom I subsequently freaked out because the last thing I texted her before misplacing the phone was something like, “I think this taxi is taking me the wrong way.”) I am what you might call a late-adopter of technology.  I resisted the smart phone partly for financial reasons but also because I was afraid that it would distract me.  What I didn’t anticipate is how much I would come to depend on it. It’s wonderful because it has made this blog possible in a way that it never really was before, but it is also one more thing in this loud, artificially-flavored-and-colored modern life that serves as a barrier between me and the world of dirt and skin and breath. So, just for today, no picture.

But I’ll probably make up for it tomorrow.