August
2002
Why’d
the Turtle Cross the Road?
By Kendra Kerman
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Don't Miss: Tips for Sharing the Roads with Animals
I drive out to the country every day to take my daughter to daycare.
You might imagine that it’s a pleasant 20-minute trip, passing
fields of grazing horses, ducks on the ponds and songbirds in the trees.
I wish. Instead of soaking up the scenery and daydreaming, I’m
nervously scanning the roadway shoulders for corpses: my little daily
outing involves a body count. There’s always roadkill galore here
in mid-Missouri, and right now, the special of the month is turtle.
Mating season for turtles is from April to late June, and the roads
look like a dating service gone wrong. At times, all the shells littered
along the road resemble popcorn on a movie theater floor. Turtles make lousy
speedbumps.
I’ve got the drill down pretty well. Whenever I see one plodding
determinedly into traffic, the adrenaline kicks in. I hit my flashers,
pull over, quickly glance around to check for oncoming cars, and make
a mad dash for it. Sometimes as I’m running up to a turtle, I witness
it getting hit, its carapace making a sickening popping sound under
the wheel. I spend the rest of the day shell-shocked, feeling guilty
and second-guessing myself. But sometimes I reach the turtle in time,
my heart pounding triumphantly. It’s so amazing how one moment,
they can be intact and healthy; the next, crushed, stunned and bleeding.
I imagine the shell offers minimal protection, so they don’t die
instantly, but suffer for awhile. I generally try to help them over
to the other side, but that’s not always possible—I don’t
want to end up as roadkill, too. They usually show their gratitude by
peeing all over me.
I thought I was the lone turtle advocate in Columbia, until one day,
while I was working at home, my husband Andrew marched in and dangled
a turtle in my face. He set it out in our backyard, telling me it was
the third one he rescued that day. It was such a nice surprise to find
out I wasn’t alone in my “save the turtles” campaign
and that another person who cared was my very own husband.
The Box Turtle Observation Project Web site (http://mcnet.marietta.edu/~mcshaffd/boxt/boxt.html)
recommends that if you rescue a turtle in the road, you should place
it on the side it is trying to reach. The author of that site, biology
professor Dave McShaffrey, is way more pragmatic than I am. For various
reasons, such as not wanting to introduce turtle diseases to a population
in a different location, he says it’s better to leave the turtle
right where it is than to move it to a safer place down the road (sure
makes me glad I wash up after handling them). He also advises NEVER
taking a turtle home. Oops.
At one point, Andrew announced to me that from now on, he would bring
every turtle he rescued home with him. “We’ll have a turtle
ranch,” he said. Luckily, I was able to talk him out of that idea
early on, so we have just two turtles in our backyard, Smiley and Flash.
Flash has a lightning bolt scar on his shell a la Harry Potter. They
wander up to our screened-in porch and eat the bugs out of the spiderwebs.
I always knew they were omnivorous, and thought they stuck to grubs,
but it turns out they also eat the mice and shrews that my cat catches.
I’ve become acquainted mostly with common box turtles, but have
also encountered painted turtles—water loving reptiles that are
flatter in shape than the boxes, and have flaming streaks of yellow,
red and orange. I’ve even run into (not literally!) a couple of
big old snapping turtles the size of steering wheels. The sight of one
of those on the side of the road is like spotting an ancient sea monster.
When I saved a snapper the other day, I felt like Pee Wee Herman in
Pee Wee’s Big Adventure, where he rescues all the snakes from the
burning pet store. I didn’t really want to touch it—it was
dark and bumpy, and had a long, slithery tail. That was definitely one
I didn’t take home.
I wonder what drives them into the road—a primitive urge; a scent?
Their brains are highly developed in the sight and smell departments.
That’s not all I’ve learned as I’ve studied up on these
reptiles that have been around since prehistoric times. According to
the Box Turtle Care and Conservation Web page (http://boxturtlesite.org),
a turtle’s shell is made up of back bones and ribs, which have
expanded and fused together to protect the soft internal organs. All
the turtles I’ve met exhibit different personalities—some
are fearless, some shy, some seem moody, and some are nonplussed by
my presence, but they all have the same angry-little-old-man look.
I can’t say that I blame them when they glare at me suspiciously.
I belong to a pretty ruthless species. More and more highways are being
built and expanded, with no thought of creating underpasses or barriers
to keep animals off the roads. Perhaps in a few years I won’t have
to worry about the turtles, but, though they may have outlived the dinosaurs,
these fascinating creatures with a reputation for being slow may prove
to be fast movers after all—right up the endangered species list.
Kendra Kerman is a writer in Columbia, Missouri, where she is Director
of Friends of the Guitar House (www.theguitarhouse.com).
She is also a Friend of the Turtles.
Until They Learn to Look Both
Ways…
By Kendra Kerman
This morning, my sister-in-law was on her way to work when she passed
what she thought was a dead kitten in the middle of the road. Out of
respect, she pulled over to move the body so it wouldn’t keep getting
hit, and discovered to her horror that the kitten was still alive. She
rushed her to the emergency clinic, but due to the head trauma and nature
of her injuries, they euthanized her. As if you didn’t have enough
to worry about, here’s one more thing to haunt you—are those
victims you see languishing in the road still alive?
I won’t even waste time researching how many animals die each year
by collision, because whatever the estimated number is, it will be in
the millions and will make you wince. Of course those figures don’t
include the animals who manage to crawl away and die elsewhere of their
injuries. I wonder how many of these fatalities occur due to pure accident,
carelessness, or deliberate cruelty? Regardless, I think the majority
of deaths caused by motor vehicles are preventable.
Of course, the best way to prevent deaths is to drive less. I’d
be a hypocrite to offer that as advice, since I drive my car every day.
Instead, I offer some non-hypocritical tips:
• Be vigilant. Scan the roads and keep an eye on the shoulders.
• Try not to drive at night, when many animals are most active,
but if you must, be especially cautious.
• Be aware of the different times of year and which animals to
look out for. For instance, deer abound in the fall, and many of them
search for new territory in the spring.
• Know how different animals behave, which will help you avoid
hitting them. Opossums freeze when a car approaches. If one deer dashes
across the road ahead of you, expect another to follow. Racoons may
have babies trailing behind them. If a bird flies in front of you, slamming
on the brakes will upset its wind current and may cause it to smash
into your windshield.
• Don’t speed. The faster you drive, the less time you’ll
have to react.
And finally, advice from Merritt Clifton, Editor of Animal People: “It’s
easier and safer to anticipate animals in the road than it is to miss
them once they’re in front of you. Watch for sudden movement in
roadside grass and shrubbery. Remember that most lines in the woods
are vertical—if you see something horizontal, it may be an animal.”
P.S.—Ingrid Newkirk, President of PETA, has suggested that if people
are going to eat meat, they might as well eat roadkill, since it’s
already dead. I found that pretty amusing, until I heard that Tennessee
has just enacted a law making it legal to eat roadkill, as long as it
has been dead for three hours or less. I’d love to know what brought
about the need for that law.
