When I was a kid, I wanted to be a herpetologist. Reptiles fascinated me more than anything else. In Boy Scouts, the only merit badge I strove for was Reptile Study. I brought home snakes. I collected turtles every summer, then let them all go when school started. I know from reptiles.
Walking with Grace has brought me close to more fauna than I've seen since high school in Vero Beach, Florida. We've come within catching range of a half dozen snakes, four or five turtles and even a couple of lizards. So I'm always on the lookout. So is Grace.
This morning's walk took us straight up the western face of the steep grassy earthen dam at Shadybrook Park and down the other side to Rainbow Lake (the locals call it Rat Lake.) Beyond Rat Lake is a huge grassy, often soggy field where Grace loves to ramble. We go there a lot. Sometimes the grass is feet high, but this summer it has been mowed pretty regularly. This morning, as we walked and stopped and sniffed and chewed grass and such, I noticed a dark shape just about in the middle of the field. I couldn't remember ever seeing it before, so I spent my part of the time staring at this thing. At first it looked like a big snapping turtle, something you rarely see this far from water. Probably a stick with a broken off branch, looking like a shell with a head sticking out. We circled on around, and I fully expected the shape to change with our shift in perspective. But try as we might to discern what it really was, it still insisted on looking like a big snapping turtle. Finally, Grace saw it too, and we crossed the field for a closer look. It turned out to be a big snapping turtle, about twelve inches from the front to the back of her shell. She was this far away from the lake because she was laying eggs. The rear portion was deep into the soil, and she wasn't coming out. I remembered a snapper I had in my collection back in the sixties who laid her eggs in my mother's garden.
Grace, of course, wanted to make it run so she could give chase. That's what fauna are for, after all. She strained against the leash to go up to it and nudge it. She doesn't know what I know - that this snapper's neck is also a foot long, and her jaws can bite a chunk out of you in the blink of an eye. I wasn't going to let that happen, and I also did not wish to disturb this lady in her egg laying endeavor. I dragged Grace away and led her reluctantly home.
