Don’t pull their tails, Officer Tail-Puller! Not good for turtles!
Not the proper way to hold a turtle. No wonder he’s pissed.
(Both hands, either side of the rear end of his shell for support.)
News flash: Snapping turtle found to be aggressive. In other news, duckling found to be fuzzy, water found to be wet.
Little is right. I’ve walked up on ones around ponds before that have been big enough that I’d fear my hand or wrist, not just a finger.
Please tell me that the drugs being guarded by this turtle were psychedelic mushrooms.
Hands on both sides of the shell, held facing away from your body - this snapper could still get his beak into the warden’s side.
Seriously. Anyone who has come across a big snapper would totally understand. Also, despite the stereotypes about turtles, these guys can move pretty fast when they want to take your finger off.
Which they do, all the time. They crave nothing but blood.
It takes some creative thinking to come upon the idea of getting a snapping turtle and using it to guard drugs. (Well, I guess the drug-runners had easy access to “inspiration”.)
Wait, where is the severed head that was on the back of the tortuga?
Don’t under estimated snapping turtles. Those fuckers will bite the shit out of you.
I agree, most treasures are guarded by orcs.
These drug dealers are real life Dungeon Masters.
"little guy aggressively jumped at them! " Must be a Jack Turtle.
kudos to this guy for apologizing for not using best handling practice. I know better now, but this is how I learned to pick them up (but fer sure by the meaty end of the tail). Not much difference if it’s going in the pot. I was handling one once, in Oklahoma, come to think of it, when my eyeglasses slipped off my sweaty head and the snapper caught them on the way down for me, snipped neatly through the nosepiece
I can’t be the only person who read the title and expected to read that the police had shot the turtle.
At the current rate of police militarization, it’s surprising they didn’t get the bomb squad out there with a few pounds of C4 and reduce the car to shrapnel. Just to ensure officer safety, of course.
So wait, snapping turtles snap? That certainly explains the name then!
And I’d expect it to be a bit pissed (that is angry, not drunk)[a note for our limey members] if it was shoved in a trunk and not a pond.
Snappers are dicks any day of the week, but put one in a horrendous and stressful environment?
I thought I was going to scroll down and see that the turtle was dead because Officer Friendly felt threatened. If it had been a dog they would have shot it.
“Defensive” might be a better word choice. I don’t think one should expect the turtle to understand differences between the handling that trapped it in the trunk of an auto that proceeded to have an accident and the “rescue” (I hope) by authorities.
I swam in a snapping turtle pond often in my youth, along with much of the surrounding community. I heard third-hand stories of bites but never knew of any first or second-hand.
Of course, today, parents don’t let kids of that age off the block much less into a country pond miles away with snapping turtles and leeches.
