I've been wondering what happened to this discussion on Lawrence's Tortoise poems. I was reminded of this discussion and the poems last night, when a huge turtle ventured into our yard and then headed down our driveway; no doubt, she was heading for the street, to lay her eggs somewhere over on the other side - dumb turtle. Now the poor babies will, no doubt, get flattened, unless they are really smart and make it across the street, when there is little traffic. At anyrate, it was so cool to observe this turtle up close. She was a snapper about 18" or more in length and about 13" across; she may have been even larger (I am just guessing). She was one of the largest and oldest I have seen around here. Also, the tail added an additional 8 or so inches to her length. Her head was massive and surely, did look like a prehistoric animal; so did her giant claws. We live with a pond directly behind our house/backyard; so without a doubt, she had ventured up under the cover of night to lay her eggs, as I said before. My mother just happened to put on side light on and saw her massive shape in our driveway; she called to me and I grabbed a flashlight. Wish now, I had tried to get a photo. It might have worked with a flash. I was impressed with how close to Lawrence's description the turtle was. I observed the pattern of block segments on it's back...so interesting; and the fringe of the shell with it's series of overlaping sections. Also, the shell looked leathery and old; even ancient, prehistoric - one had to marvel at nature's design and patterning; even the tail had patterns and looked like it had sort of dark/black claw-like protrusions and could be quite treacherous, if whipped around in the water. This turtle has been around for awhile. I wonder how many years she has been coming up on land to lay her eggs. I wonder how many children she has had all told; how many eggs she layed in her lifetime.
She poked her head out of her shell sheepishly and when I took a twig she didn't snap at it as I expected. She was more slow and dossal than I thought she would be. Finally, after standing there a good half hour she did venture to poke her head out and show her eyes wide open and also to show her sharp needlelike teeth; sort of threatening looking. My neighbor came up to view her too and see if we could divert her from going across the road. Apparently our diversion attempts did not do the trick and not long after she was gone; no doubt busy with the birth process.
