Poor turtles

On the way to church today we passed two dead turtles about fifty yards apart, run over and lying on the shoulder of the road. Not cuff link sized pets that you might see in a small fishbowl, these were hub cap size snappers.


This isn't one of the turtles we saw. This lucky snapper made it across the road!


How do you hit a turtle driving in your car? The second turtle I can understand. It got run over because someone was looking at the first dead turtle. But that first one has me confused.

I mean it’s not like a squirrel that starts to cross the road, stops, starts, feints, dodges, head-fakes, reconsiders, sprints, jukes, faints, revives, runs down the road away from your car, then does an abrupt 180 and dives for your tire. No one blames you for hitting a squirrel. But a fourteen inch snapping turtle? Even a sleepy driver’s ed student should be able to judge the trajectory of a turtle and guide the car safely by.

Plus there is the morphology to consider. Hitting a turtle is like running over an aluminum briefcase only to discover it’s full of spaghetti sauce and fried chicken. It can’t be good for your car.

Chapter three of John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath has some interesting thoughts about turtles and highways. Go here and scroll down a bit to read it.