When the months of Spring slide along the coastline into Summer, the reptilian Snapping Turtle has risen from the muddy bottom of brackish river tributaries to journey overland to lay her eggs.
First, the female has to meet and make love with the male turtle to fertilize her eggs. However, Mother Nature usually has already bestowed upon her a woman’s prerogative to change her mind about reproduction. If she feels in her heart that conditions are not exactly right for her eggs, she is blessed with the ability to store the male’s sperm in her reproductive organs until she feels her time is right.
In this time of global warming and climate change, experts in scientific research have discovered that her eggs, when incubated at about 65 degrees, produce only males, at 73 degrees both male and females, and 75 degrees only females.
Once she felt comfortable in her heart that the time and temperature were correct, she got the inner green light to head overland as far as a mile or more, as well as crossing a country road with traffic in plain view of onlookers. She may return to the same sandy hill she had used to reproduce last year.
As in my illustration, in less than a single day she may have to lay as many as 30 to 40 eggs and use her tail to bury them in the sand out of sight of predators. All too often, they are found by hungry skunks, raccoons and crows.
If she finds that her treasure trove has been disturbed upon her return the following year, she knows not to use it again. Once she has laid and hidden her eggs, she immediately takes off on the very same path she used to get there. All the hard work and important timing is forever finished and left behind her with her future hatchlings to fend for themselves.
When the hatchlings are born into an ancient reptilian ritual with the classification Chelydra Serpentine, they are among the oldest creatures on the face of the earth, even before the age of the dinosaurs. They probably were among the original forms of living things that first climbed up on land from the primordial soup that produced life – like creatures out from the ocean.
If you should see a Snapping Turtle crossing a road, please do not waylay or disturb its reproductive intentions.
You might be a witness to Mother Nature’s ancient renewal to ensure an unbroken chain of historic evolution from your own reading and illustrated impression that my article and drawing will live in your mind as long as I have hoped for your future scientific evaluation.
By George B. Emmons
