Cell Phone Gamera
May. 3rd, 2011 09:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jere7myThere's a loop of off-road bike path along the south side of the Charles, splitting from the main bike path just west of the Henderson Boathouse and the community garden. I haven't taken it in a while — ever since they put in wood chips, which are no fun to ride on — but today the weather was so nice I decided I wanted a little slice of nature in my ride home.
I'm glad I did — what did I see beside the path but a great snapping turtle, one-eyed and dinosaur-tailed! His shell was enormous (about 14"x11"), with cracks and ragged tears along the rear curve, as though he were a banged-about museum specimen who'd returned to life. He was lumped and spined and leathery, primordial in a literal sense — snappers haven't changed much in millions of years. While I knelt in the wood chips and took pictures with my cell phone, he watched me sharply with his one glassy eye, drawing his head back into his neck whenever I moved, stretching his barbeled chin skyward when I'd held still for a while. A jogger stopped to admire him with me, and we chatted for a while. I gathered up the nerve to stroke his jagged tail (which he wrapped around his legs, all offended-like), then rode the rest of the way home in a cloud of glee. Turtle!
Check out that totally dinosaurian tail!
I'm glad I did — what did I see beside the path but a great snapping turtle, one-eyed and dinosaur-tailed! His shell was enormous (about 14"x11"), with cracks and ragged tears along the rear curve, as though he were a banged-about museum specimen who'd returned to life. He was lumped and spined and leathery, primordial in a literal sense — snappers haven't changed much in millions of years. While I knelt in the wood chips and took pictures with my cell phone, he watched me sharply with his one glassy eye, drawing his head back into his neck whenever I moved, stretching his barbeled chin skyward when I'd held still for a while. A jogger stopped to admire him with me, and we chatted for a while. I gathered up the nerve to stroke his jagged tail (which he wrapped around his legs, all offended-like), then rode the rest of the way home in a cloud of glee. Turtle!
Check out that totally dinosaurian tail!
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Date: 2011-05-04 02:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-04 03:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-04 01:19 pm (UTC)(And at the risk of prompting hyphen-moving amusements, that is one bad-ass turtle.)
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Date: 2011-05-05 11:42 pm (UTC)