Indecent Exposure — 3 April 2003I guess it’s the nightmare scenario for any guardian. The telephone rings out of the blue and the police want to speak with you. If you have enough critters under your charge, it’s inevitable that the phone will ring someday and a desk sergeant will say, “I’ve got one of your turtles here at the station.” That’s what Sergeant Taylor told me last Tuesday. Indecent exposure: another terrapin found cold-stunned on the tidal flats. This time a local shellfisherwoman found an old friend, Terrapin 722, a 12-year-old female whom we have observed nesting on Indian Neck since 1999. Unfortunately, she had been exposed a bit too long and she never recovered from severe hypothermia. So, this morning when I got another call about a cold-stunned turtle on the wrack line near Egg Island, I rushed to the scene. Jim Quigley, a long-standing terrapin volunteer who normally checks nesting on Great Island during June and July, found the terrapin as he walked the beach east of Powers Landing near town center. As he would with a sea turtle in a similar condition, he moved it above the high water mark and covered it with seaweed to prevent additional exposure to wind and plunging ambient temperature.
A seven-year-old pre-pubescent female, she was cold but responsive. Her rear limbs had no muscle control and her right eye remained closed. But her front legs were strong and her left eye tracked movement well. There were light scratches across her carapace and a slight nick with light bleeding on her right cowl, as though something had scraped her out of her hibernaculum. Her cavities and cowls were still muddy from burial in the tidal ooze. For now she’s lying in about a centimeter of luke warm water under a gentle heat lamp. If she continues to recover from cold-stunning, she’ll join Terrapin 1791, an eight-year-old male, in the faux marsh tank. You may recall that he was found on the Lieutenant Island causeway on 22 March (see Spring Surprise: Cold-Stunned Terrapins!). He has fully recovered from hypothermia and anxious to meet his buddies once terrapin springtime comes to the Great White North, in three to four more weeks. He’s already begun to cuddle up to the tank corner nearest the recuperating female in her own container!
The four-year-old snapper male found stone cold in a frozen fish pond in late March has fully recovered, too. He’s planning on an Earth Day release into the butterfly garden pond at Mass Audubon’s Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary. He invites one and all to his coming out party.
These two handsome dudes were kind enough to pose for series of comparison shots, for those who want to have a visual cue on distinguishing diamondback terrapins and snapping turtles.
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