Opinion & Comment

Bub The Turtle Whisperer

APPALACHIAN NOTEBOOK - Steve Oden

Big old snapping turtles crossing rural roads are a common sight this time of year. I saw a whopper the other day, scuttling across the pavement. The turtle was mossy-backed, with a high crenellated shell like the battlements of a medieval castle.

It made me recall the Turtle Whisperer.

I’ve always fancied myself an amateur herpetologist. In my younger days, I chased and caught all manner of reptiles and amphibians, including snakes and turtles (much to my mother’s dismay). Even today, I can’t resist the urge to slow down and stop the car when I come upon a snapping turtle in the midst of its travels.

Why does a snapping turtle cross the road? Surely, there is something on the other side that beckons. Snapping turtles travel for various reasons. Nesting season is from late April to early fall, depending on climate zones. Frequently, a snapper on the move is a female, looking for a suitable location to lay a clutch of eggs.

Sometimes, snappers crawl long distances to find happier hunting grounds. These turtles might appear slow and clumsy on land, but they are highly efficient predators in the water. A specimen weighing 30-40 pounds has a voracious appetite. Over a period of time, it can reduce the population of fish in a small pond.

Snappers also relocate when their home waters dry up. I helped blow a beaver dam once with a dynamite charge and watched, with great satisfaction, as muddy water gushed through the hole to drain the swamp that had flooded several roads. In two days, the beaver pond emptied and was drying. A mass migration of snapping turtles resulted. Large and small, the turtles set out to find new homes. This was when I witnessed the strangest thing: the Turtle Whisperer.

I’ve known folks who relish turtle meat. Snappers, they maintain, are delicious when properly prepared. One group of old men close to where I now live meet along a creek every summer to “grapple” for snappers, catching the mean-tempered turtles by hand underwater, then butchering and cooking the critters like fried chicken.

When word circulated in the neighborhood that we had drained the beaver swamp and snapping turtles were on the move, people started showing up with wash tubs and burlap sacks to collect the wandering reptiles for their cooking pots.

The Turtle Whisperer was among them. He was known in the community as the town drunk. His real name was Grady Chops, but everyone called him “Bub.” He was a good hand during haying season, if he was sober; he also was a wizard with a chain saw and splitting ax and supported himself by cutting firewood.

Bub was middle-aged, short, and thick-set in the body. He wore overalls, with no shirt and only one side of the bib fastened. Most days, Bub exuded alcohol fumes to rival a whiskey distillery. He rode an old bike around town (having lost his driver’s license), and he slept in the scale house of the cotton gin.

He was not a mean drunk, nor was he dangerous. Bub was actually a lot of fun to be around, except at the annual Baptist picnic when his antics tended to subdue the crowd.

Bub was also a mimic and loved to play the clown. He had a talent for imitating the speech patterns of famous people. He did a passable John F. Kennedy, and his Clint Eastwood was great.

Whenever folks gathered, whether at a home football game or at the Veterans Day parade, Bub was always in the background, usually acting the part of a comedian. So it was during the turtle roundup. As folks scrambled to subdue hissing snappers for their supper, Bub pranced around and described the action in a voice eerily like that of TV sportscaster Curt Gowdy. Several of the reptiles escaped into a water-filled ditch. People took off their shoes and waded in after the snappers. Bub stood on dry land and yelled encouragement.

“Here, Bub!” shouted a turtle hunter, throwing a small snapper out of the ditch. “Make a pet of him.”

Bub pounced on the turtle, which probably weighed 3-4 pounds. He held its slimy shell against his chest lovingly and started whispering to it. The immature snapper settled down and stopped struggling in his grip.

Having just read the novel “The Horse Whisperer,” I was amazed. Bub was the Turtle Whisperer!

“What are you whispering to that little turtle, Bub?” I asked.

He looked up coyly and said, “This little turtle has lost his mama. A’hm gonna be his mama.”

At this moment, the snapper extended its neck and latched on to Bub’s naked chest where his overall bib always flapped down. To be specific, the turtle bit him on the right nipple. Bub whooped like a banshee and took off running, the snapper hanging on with determination.

The old legend concerning snapping turtles is that, when they bite, they won’t turn loose until it thunders. Because not a storm cloud was in the sky, several of the turtle hunters decided to restrain Bub and remove the snapper. He fought them and the turtle before finally succumbing to the weight of bodies and the pain.

“Get it off!” Bub wailed as the rescuers discussed the best way to detach the snapper. They tried to pull it off, but only succeeded in stretching the turtle’s elastic neck and causing Bub to screech.

Finally, a local logger got the idea of having the victim kneel at a fresh-sawn white oak stump. They laid the snapper on the flat top of the stump and bashed it with pieces of firewood until it released poor Bub. Unfortunately, a few errant blows hit Bub, too. So much for the short career of the Turtle Whisperer: He lost a chunk of flesh and bore a scar for the rest of his life.

In typical Bub fashion, he bore no grudge against snapping turtles. But, he never forgot being whammed about the head and shoulders by people wielding pieces of firewood. Rather than thanking his rescuers, he paid them back by hiding a dead snapping turtle in each of their vehicles. It doesn’t take long for turtles to decompose, and getting the odor out of upholstery is almost impossible.

I don’t think the logger ever did find his dead snapping turtle because he had to drive with the windows down in the winter.