Dusty and Aspen headed out to a remote part of the lake after receiving an urgent hotline call. A neighbor spotted a monster of a snapping turtle across the cove with an arrow stuck in its neck. They pulled up to the address and found an empty home with a for sale sign in the front yard. Walking around to the backyard, they could see the cove but no evidence of a snapping turtle. The grassy yard sloped down into the water; it was right at the water’s edge that they finally saw the beast. The snapper was huge with a long arrow sticking out of its neck. Dusty ran back to grab the crate and tools. Good thing they brought the biggest crate they had, Aspen thought to herself, because this guy was just barely going to fit.
Dusty laid out all the equipment in the yard: tree branch trimmers, leather gloves, a plunger, a towel, and a stick. The snapper was lying with its head up on the shore. They decided first to cut the arrow. It would be too long and get knocked around, possibly hurting the snapper more, while placing it in the crate. Aspen grabbed the stick and the plunger on Dusty’s instruction. “Now what I want you to do is stand in front of him and lean in holding that plunger over his face. If he gets loose from that, you put that stick in his mouth, so he bites down on it and not me! Got it?” Aspen nodded and did exactly as directed, while Dusty leaned in on the right with the branch trimmers, pinching the arrow shaft off about four inches from the snapper’s neck. This must have put pressure on the wound because the animal suddenly came to life and tried to turn to the left and slide back down into the water. Dusty acted quickly grabbing the carapace on both sides near the rear of the turtle, pulling the turtle up into the yard. Aspen jumped out of the way, awaiting instructions. The beast was strong and tried to dig into the grass with its claws, but Dusty was determined. “Grab the crate, open the door and put it right up in front of his face so I can get him in,” Dusty said, struggling to keep the upper hand in this wrestling match. Within seconds the snapper was safely locked in the crate and Dusty, breathing heavily, needed a moment to catch his breath. They collected all their things, placing them on top of the crate, then each taking a side of the crate, they carried the patient up the yard, and loaded it into the back of Aspen’s SUV. “That was interesting,” Dusty laughed as they buckled their seatbelts for the drive back to the center.
“Yeah!” said Aspen feeling like Dusty had just wrestled some Jurassic beast. At the center, they placed the crate in the corner of the hospital, and Aspen filled out an intake card with the information from the hotline call. They always released turtles back to the wild within a half-mile of where they were found so they would not have to go through the perils of traveling back to their home location once they were healthy. The snapper would have some quiet time to relax after the stressful encounter before it would be examined.
In the meantime, it was back to caring for the patients already at the center. Aspen jumped right into feeding birds and cleaning out their boxes. Depending on the age of the bird, it had to be fed every 15, 30, 60 or 120 minutes. Being a momma bird must be an exhausting job, Aspen thought to herself as she fed a little blue jay. Sun up to sun down, continuously feeding begging mouths. Around the room she made the rounds, some of the staff joked that it was a merry-go-round. You always hoped to get to the end before the timer went off signaling you to start again. Round and round they went each day, staff , interns, volunteers, all wildlife lovers.
“Does anyone know where Shelby is?” asked one of the summer interns. “I can only find one turtle in the front tank.” A staff member went to investigate; she lifted the half log that the box turtles usually hid under, dug around in the dirt a bit with her fingers, moved the half broken clay pot, and felt around in the dirt under it.
“Hmmm,” she said, “that’s weird. Was there an education program today? Maybe she is out with one of the presenters?” They checked the calendar with all the dates and locations for presentations on it.
“There was a presentation yesterday, but none today.” By this time Dusty was texting Kim and the education presenter asking if either knew anything about the missing turtle. Both quickly replied no! The mystery deepened. The turtle room was searched, thinking someone must have mistakenly put her in the wrong place, but no luck.
They were starting to get nervous when one of the volunteers shouted, “Found her!” Shelby buried herself all the way down at the bottom of her tank, under all of the moist dirt in the remotest corner. The little box turtle, covered in dirt looked grumpily at the human holding her as if she had been woken from a beautiful dream. Everyone sighed in relief and Shelby was taken to the turtle room for her 30-minute soak.
Before Aspen left for the day, she checked on the fawns that had come in a few days before. She was always a little nervous following up on an animal because she knew not all of them could be saved. Aspen learned the fawn caught by a dog died a few days later of capture myopathy; she made a mental note to read more about the condition later. The other fawn they were worried may have been imprinted was transferred to another rehabilitation center that had a large area dedicated to the rehabilitate of fawns. The baby was in good hands, so Aspen was optimistic.
Aspen left the center to have dinner with her family. Jack would defiantly get a kick out of the snapping turtle story. As she climbed the front porch steps, he ran out to meet her, yelling, “Guess what? Guess what?”
“What Jack?” Aspen replied.
“I shot a bull’s-eye, today!” he said excitedly dragging her through the house into the backyard.
“Wow, that’s cool. What else are you shooting with the bow?” Aspen asked eyebrow raised.
“Only the target, sis. I’d never shoot at anything alive. That’s mean” He ran to the rectangular foam target and pulled out the arrow from the center, then returned to his sister.
“Good,” she said, “let me tell you about an animal that wasn’t so lucky.” With that, they went into the house leaving the bow and arrows by the back door. She spent the rest of the evening telling her family stories of animals from the center over a delicious dinner. This was a special family dinner as Grandpa Dean joined them; he had some news of his own to share. He would be leaving mid-December on a trip to Antarctica.
Grandpa Dean was Aspen and Jack’s favorite grandparent. He had all kinds of adventures, traveling the world. In the last five years, he visited the Great Barrier Reef of Australia, the pyramids of Egypt and Machu Picchu in Peru. He had quite the stamp collection on his passport. Long before Aspen was born, Grandpa Dean lived in Florida and worked to protect natural wildlife there. He focused on gopher tortoises and burrowing owls. Everyone gathered around Grandpa Dean at the oversized coffee table where they usually played board games. He spread out a large world map. There were red lines drawn that mapped the course of his journey with dates scribbled o to the side.
“I leave December 10, and fly from Atlanta to Buenos Aires in Argentina.” Grandpa Dean explained tracing the path with the eraser of a pencil. “We head south and tour Tierra del Fuego, which is a National Park.” Jack’s eyes got big. He loved National Parks and hoped to visit all the ones in the United States by the time he was eighteen. “We will get on the ship and cross the Drake Passage.”
Jack excitedly interrupted, “That’s where Sir Francis Drake sailed to circumnavigate the world, right?” Aspen smiled at her mom and dad.
“That’s right, Jack. Did you learn about that in school?” his father asked.
“Nope, just read it in a book last summer,” Jack replied smiling.
“We will land on a few islands during the trip, camp on the ice, take a polar plunge, see some penguins and other wildlife, then with any luck, I will be back for Christmas.” Grandpa Dean said while jumping the pencil around a few places on the map before tracing it back up along Argentina to Buenos Aires and then back to Atlanta. Everyone was very excited for Grandpas trip. Aspen and Jack both bombarded him with questions. He did have to break it to Jack that he would not be bringing him back a penguin because he was sure one would not fit in his carry-on.
