Ka thump! Ka thump!
My heart tries to explode out of my chest while simultaneously my stomach attempts to burrow down a pit in my gut. My first reaction is to quickly justify the accident. It was dark out. I couldn’t see it. I was coming around a corner. I had been driving for two hours. I was excited to finally arrive at the lake cabin. I looked in my rear view mirror at the giant snapping turtle I just assaulted with my car.
I look back again to see a pair of headlights swerve to miss the reptilian monolith in the road. I must turn around and get it off the road, I think to myself. Fear of what I would see if I did return keeps my car at 25 miles per hour for a few hundred yards before I force myself to pull over. Still undecided as to what the next course of action should be, I glance back at the now distant bump in the road for a third time.
My pulse slows. My nerves settle. My breathing relaxes. Guilt, respect for the creature, responsibility to other drivers, and curiosity force me to make the U-turn.
As I cross the street to the road kill, the first thing I notice is the spray of blood. The large spatter of gore is opposite of the direction I was driving. I imagine a water balloon exploding backwards as a bowling ball rolls over it. I quickly stop imagining.
Don’t imagine, make observations. The carapace of the turtle is about a foot and a half long. It is severely warped from the collision but looks intact. Closer examination reveals a fracture between the scutes of the shell starting at the midline and running to the left. It popped on the left side above the back leg. I can’t help imagining.
The legs, head, and tail all seem intact. It appears that the shell took the majority of the force, yet the viscera that squirted nearly a foot from the opening indicate severe internal damage. A turtle’s backbone and ribs are fused to the inside of its shell. This is the worst case of chelonian scoliosis ever.
The yellow organ contrasts the crimson blood. It reminds me of a giant earthworm swimming through tomato soup. At the end of the muscular tubing are two spheres that look like pupil-less eyes. I shutter as I contemplate the possibility that these are two of the eggs of a gravid mother that I killed as it was journeying to a nesting site. I am relieved to see blood vessels and the lack of shell on them. Plus, it’s too late in the summer for a female to lay eggs.
Now how do I move it off the road? A strong snapper can extend its muscular neck over its shell in an attempt to chomp on any predator. For this reason, it’s unsafe to grasp a living turtle anywhere on the front half. Lifting it by the sturdy prehistoric tail may seem like a good alternative, but this can injure the vertebral column.
I am astonished at the absurdity of my logical arguments on how to handle a dead turtle. Still, I can’t bring myself to incorrectly handle even the corpse of such a powerful creature. I decide to grab the tail and the back of the shell to slide it off the road.
I take a firm hold on the tail and am met with resistance. Either this is really strong rigor mortis, or the snapper is still alive. Rigor mortis takes a few hours to set in…
My brief glimmer of hope vanishes the instant I reassess the damages. This thing is doomed, but alive. For now. Now how do I move it off the road?
I am still hesitant to put my hand anywhere near its vice-like jaw, although it is probably safe considering the delusional turtle is trying to “swim” away from my grip on its tail. Its head lies limply on the pavement swaying back in forth as if looking for some seaweed to hide. The legs feebly stroke through the air, and the claws scrape against the concrete etching narrow lines in the road. The irritating noise makes me shudder, but I clench my jaw and keep observing. The back left leg where the guts exploded is syncopated, dragging behind the other three by nearly half a beat.
I decide to prop the turtle just enough to slip a hand under the shell by lifting at the base of the tail and the still-kicking left hind leg. I slide my left hand under the shell between the back legs. It is pretty easy to slide because of the leakage of fluid from the shell. I am repulsed by this, but keep my hand under there. I discover that this fluid was a result of bone shard that had punctured out of the right side of the turtle. It is small enough to not coat the road in gore like the other side, but big enough to coat my hand.
I grab the left side of the turtle’s shell with my left hand. It starts to hiss at me, but it never tries to turn around to strike. I decide to be quick. I lift up ever-so-slightly and begin to slide the turtle toward the ditch. A sickening sound resonates from the air being squeezed between the organs in the shell as I exert even the smallest pressure on it. It sounds like pulling your feet out of the mud.
I finally reach the ditch. It’s still swimming. With one last heave I lift the injured animal into the grass a few yards from the road. It stops hissing. Apparently the one inch of manicured grass from the golf course is enough to convince the dying turtle it was hidden.
I take a few steps away from the tragedy, holding my hands away from my body like they are marked by the plague. I wipe my hands off on the grass. I return to the scene and see that the turtle appears to have lost all animation of life. It looks dead. But I know if I touch it, life will surge through its veins—and onto the ground around it.
I get back into the car with an awful feeling in the pit of my stomach that the creature is still suffering. I cannot bring myself to ending its life especially since I don’t have any object to assist me. Using my hands is definitely out of the question. Maybe I could crush its head with my foot? Still, if I didn’t succeed, and how would I tell, the turtle would be in no better condition. It didn’t seem to be experiencing any distress. No, getting it off the road and letting it die naturally is my best option.
I drive the rest of the way to the cabin in a calm, but saddened, state. When I arrive, I tell my family about this awful event. I expect some form of sympathy from them, but my aunt’s first remark makes my heart skip…
“That big turtle in the middle of the road up there? Oh don’t worry about that. Someone must have hit it earlier because that’s been there all day.”
