So why did the snapping turtle cross the road? Why does any turtle cross the road for that matter? I don’t know, but he obviously didn’t do it so I could carry him across to the other side. If he did he wouldn’t have been so ungrateful to hiss and snap at me while I saved his shell from tires of a car. He was heavy guy, about 25 lbs and a good 18 inches in length. Didn’t want a car to hit him, so I carried him in the direction he was going, north across Holdredge Street east of Lincoln Nebraska.
There is an old wives tale that if you see turtles crossing the road it’s going to rain. (Within 12 hours of this picture it did rain by the way. ) This theory is true, or is at least true from my standpoint. In 1988 I was working a summer internship job for SafeGuard cattle dewormer in Oklahoma. We were in the middle of a heatwave and drought. Ranchers were asking me if I was bringing rain with me when I came to visit. I always had bad news for them.
Then one morning I started noticing the turtles crossing the highway, being familiar with the old wives tale I started counting them. I stopped at 73. When I stopped at the Farmers Co-op they asked the question, “Did you bring any rain?” I jokingly told them “Turtles were all over the road it’s going to pour buckets.”
That afternoon as I drove past the co-op again it WAS pouring buckets and I honked my horn as they waved from the doorway.
The next week when I stopped by they asked the same question. I could only shake my head and say, “Sorry, this morning I saw a tarantula cross the road, it’s going to be dry for a while”
So why do turtles cross the road? Probably for many reasons, it’s breeding season, it just rained and their homes got flooded and they have moved to higher ground. Or, like another blogger thought, it’s going to rain.
