Took this snapper to his new home along with the owls.
I’m not experienced with turtles and I thought he would be calm and boring, but he was really cool!
I made sure I got proper handling instructions when I picked him up, since I had watched videos before but never actually was hands-on with one.
In the car, he kept crawling around, and when I looked back, he had climbed up and was looking out the back watching the cars. I could see him track them with his head, so he did seem actively engaged in what was going on. I wonder what people behind us thought! 😆
When we got to the lake, he was all excited and a little more difficult to grab, but I got him securely and set him down at a nice spot.
He must have felt more confident back in nature, as he lunged at me and hissed, when he had been calm at the clinic. I took it as, “I’m going in this lake now, but not because you told me to!”
Mr Turtle shuffled in and gracefully swam away.
I hope you like your home! I released him on the kayak side of the lake as opposed to the more footpath and motorboat launch parts, so hopefully it will be peaceful and full of tasty food and a nice single lady turtle! Good luck, snappy!
This behavior is called site fidelity. I just looked it up for some more specifics, since I know next to nothing about turtles. It seems stronger in some species than others, and stronger in removed adults than young turtles. Nice looking write up in basic language here. I heard this was a thing, but I will have to learn more about it, as it sounds very interesting. It says tracking of released turtles have shown they end up wandering around much more than ones returned to their previous locations. It makes sense, as if I’m in someone else’s house and need to find something, say, in the kitchen, it’s going to take me a lot longer to find it than in my own house. Now be stuck doing that at turtle speed…for every single thing I need on a daily basis!
This particular turtle did not have a location available. All the other turtles had specific addresses to return them to, but this one did not, so I took him since I was going to a nice big lake to drop off the owls since it is in a nice sized state park.