Last Tuesday started like any other Tuesday....wake up; feed the doggle; and go for a swim. But on the way for our morning swim, we noticed a turtle hanging out on a bit of green area near a fairly busy intersection in west London. On our way home, turtle hadn't moved. Andrew had to head off to work and myself to errands, but I thought I'd stop and say hello to the turtle on the way home (as I was late as usual on the way out). 4 hours after we'd first seen said turtle, it was still in the same area and had a bit of an audiance. A lady had been watching it for the past 2 hours! Turns out that "it" was a female snapping turtle, who had just laid 35 eggs! The other woman had tried to bury the eggs some to protect them and was now trying to move the turtle into the woods to point her towards the river (as the turtle kept heading for the road). Not an easy task, moving a snapping turtle!
Between the two of us we tried to distract her with a stick while picking up her back end...didn't work so well. And the poor mom turtle was exhausted after laying all those eggs. Enter the hero of the day...the Canada Post guy! He'd seen us trying to help the critter and u-turned to come help. We managed to move her into an empty plastic letter box and carry her down towards the water. Hopefully those little eggs will do ok...
I scooted home to grab the camera and hopefully track her down again for some photos...but no luck. What I did find was lots of beauty on a short little trail down to the river that I'd never explored before. An hour of hanging out there, listening to the birds and meeting a few smaller "critters" was definitely unexpected and an amazing gift on an otherwise typical Tuesday.
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