Little guy, Big Dreams

[MMR]

Found this little guy on our deck last Sunday



Can't see him? He's alittle bigger than a quarter.



I feel like this when I look out over the ocean.



Guess we can all dream big dreams, eh?

(After about 20 min of watching him stare and puff at the wall I took pity on him and lifted him up into the woods - imagine the stories he's telling his buddies!!!)

[sailingdog]

MMR—

When I saw the thread's title, at first I thought you were talking about Chuckles.

What kind of turtle was it??

[MMR]

I've not been able to figure out what kind of turtle...doesn't look like any on the google turtle sites....

Here's a close up...rough looking shell, eh?

[TrueBlue]

Looks like a loggerhead, or hawksbill. Poor little guy's chances of making it from nest to ocean were low enough - hopefully MMR's assistance boosted his odds a bit.

[TrueBlue]

Here're a few hatchlings heading to the sea . . .

[MMR]

If he was a sea turtle, then I screwed up by putting him in the woods on top of the wall. The water is the OTHER direction.

See....here I was projecting all these Take on the Challenge dreams and he was probably just giving a turtle's version of the finger at the wall that he'd just fallen over!

[sailingdog]

TB-

think that is a snapping turtle. cute when little..... vicious bastages when full grown.

[TrueBlue]

You added that pic to your post after I opened my trap . . . (g). Not a loggerhead, and it's not a hawksbill either . . . here's a pic of one I encountered in Mexico:




That's not an aquatic turtle because of the roughness of the shell and long tail. My guess would be a common snapping turtle, which lives much of it's life out of water.





EDIT - simulpost with you SD.

[MMR]

Yup...agree it looks like a snapping turtle. He was pretty aggressive when I picked him up. Didn't retreat into his shell but squirmed and clawed at me.

Tough guy!

[sailingdog]

When I was a kid, we used to do a lot of freshwater fishing...mainly for bass and pickerel. At one of the lakes we fished at a lot, Lake Conway, in NH, there was a huge old and very sneaky snapping turtle who would swim up to the canoe and then eat the fish hanging on the stringer... a few times we'd have a fishhead and not much else left of one or two of the fish we had caught.