An embarrassment of Snapping riches 8-26-2012

Running late in getting to Cutler is nothing new to us, even though it's only about 15 minutes away. I guess I figure that, since it's so close, I can dawdle and drag my feet. I really shouldn't. It's the early herper who gets the Racers.,

So, we got there about a half hour later than we'd hoped to (about 8:30AM). As usual, we walked quickly to get to Racer alley as soon as possible. The sun was already high and hot, so we figured we'd be too late again. There were some Beginning of the End type grasshoppers about, though...


About half way down Racer Alley, with no Racers in sight, Andrea bent down and scooped up this lil guy!

A very active (and photogenic) hatchling Common Snapping Turtle!

We took oodles of photos of him, so charming he was!

Andrea released him (off of the trail) and I said "I doubt we'll see anything cuter than that today!"

Andrea replied, "What about this?"

Another!!


We started to peek ahead in the trail... a third!!


Wow!! This Praying Mantis stopped to applaud our good fortune!


Can I interest you in #4? Only missing the Gamera jet-packs here!


#5 was a handsome devil!


By the time we came upon #6-

-we realized this was turning into a very special hike!

#7 had some 'tude!



# 8


was soon joined by #9...


while #10 was walking along...


I think this is 9 and 10, but I'm not positive... I just like the picture!


This is definitely #11!


I looked up the path and was greeted by a smattering of snappers! Here is #11, 12, 13 and 14!!



So, we had reached the end of Racer Alley (having completely forgotten about Racers!) and had moved 14 hatchling Snapping Turtles off of the path (which has joggers and bikes on it) and into safety! We caught our breath and headed back, unsure if we'd see more (or repeats!) or if it was just a matter of very good timing.

We did see two more... #15 and 16, but the path was pretty clear for the rest of the way.



This was all along about 1/4 mile of path. They could have been from any number of nests. Who knows how many we couldn't see in the high grass and vegetation!! One thing is for sure... they all smelled swampy (or smelling of egg?) and many of them still had their egg-teeth.

We got off of Racer Alley and into the woods, where it was much cooler. We still kept our eyes on the path though. I did manage to peek up once and saw a very clean Garter Snake! The Paul's Gradfather of Garter Snakes!


He was pretty mellow too, to put it mildly...



We saw a quick and difficult to photograph Leadback, too!


And an Eft!


Andrea picked up a piece of tar paper and said an Eft tumbled out, which started me signing "You got to ro-o-oll me, roll me the tumblin' efts" for a while. It looked like this.

And smelled funny, but held my glasses in place nicely.


So, we didn't see any more snapper babies on the way out, but warned all of the cyclists we saw to be very careful. We didn't see any turtle casualties but did see a dead Ringneck on the path. Such a shame... he was fairly large for a Ringneck... about 12" long.

So that was a bit of a downer way to end a wonderful trip. But we're still very happy with our many cute Snappers!! I hope we helped some of them get a good head start and get on their way to getting big and healthy!