Tuesday 21 May 2013

How to help a turtle to cross the road

Long Lake snapping turtle!
I couldn't believe it was real!
 The first thing to know is what kind of turtle it is since you need to be careful with snappers!
Grumpy snapping turtle!
This is a great video (below)! In this, mating and egg-laying season, they are trying to cross to get to the sandy spot where they can dig and lay eggs.

The first thing to know is to send it in the direction it is headed towards.

Tucked in!
There are other tricks to it. Some people keep a window scraper
in the car to push it across. The scraping does much less to the turtle than getting smucked by a car!

Of course, the wee ones you can simply lift, by grabbing either side of the shell. The snappers, however, have long necks and will snap at you!
While they cause some people fear, they are endangered.

This video from the Toronto Zoo shows how

It's important to send it across
in the direction it was headed.
Blanding's turtle
to pick them up.

Painted turtle

4 comments:

Red said...

No turtles here!

Shey said...

Nice shots. Very fascinating post. Would love to see one in the near future.

Sarah ~ Magnolias Attic said...

The turtle in the video was certainly being a good sport about being dragged across the road so many times! Great information!

Sallie (FullTime-Life) said...

Interesting! We have gopher tortoises here that are endangered; there are 'tortoise crossing' signs in some places. (I don't think you could lift them, they're huge).