This morning I awoke in my own bed. Not that it’s unusual, but I was supposed to be waking up in Scott’s guest bed in Oakland, but my trip to
Linuxworld Expo was cancelled due to flight delays brought on by hurricane Alex.

Since I thought it would rain all day (it didn’t, we only got about 0.10 inches in Pittsboro) I left the Guinea hens locked up.

So I was somewhat surprised when I caught, out of the corner of my eye, a large gray shape moving across the yard. My first thought was that it would turn out to be an escaped Guinea hen. I was wrong.

A large snapping turtle was heading from the pond toward destinations unknown. A few years back I had placed a much smaller turtle near the pond, so I wonder if it was the same animal.

Since most of our property is fenced, I doubted the turtle would make it off the farm. Also, since Freya likes to chase anything that moves, chances are the turtle and she would meet (the other dogs pretty much ignored it).

We had spent a bunch of money on Blaze this week (story to follow) and I didn’t want to have to take Freya to the vet for a turtle bite, so the decision was made that the turtle had to go.

We have a couple of ponds at Blast, so I thought “hey, I’ll just take the turtle to work, like Show-N-Tell”. I went and got a large plastic bucket that we use to muck stalls, grabbed the turtle by the tail, plopped him in the bucket, and stuck the bucket in my truck.

I grabbed my stuff from the house and went back out to the truck. The turtle was roaming around the bed, as he was able to tip the bucket over. So I strapped the bucket down, once again placed the turtle in the bucket, and headed off to work.

Looking in my rearview mirror, I saw this monster trying to crawl out of the bucket, and pretty much succeeding. Not wanting to have this animal splattered all over the highway, I figured I needed to let him go pretty soon, so I found a large empty field off the gravel road leading to my house. Singing “Born Free” I unceremoniously dumped him from the bucket. Maybe not the best solution, but at least he ain’t
soup.