From my earliest days, I’ve had a fascination with turtles. It all started when I was 3 years old on vacation in Michigan with my parents. Wandering the lakeshore under mom’s watchful eye, I looked down at my feet in the water and saw something round, dark colored, with tiny legs. Reaching down, I snatched up the baby snapping turtle and ran to show mom and dad. They were thrilled… or at least I thought so.

I bestowed a proper name for my new pet turtle… Tommy. Tommy was tough as he made the jostling ride back to Indiana in a fishbowl in dad’s pickup truck’s tool box.

To keep Tommy under constant watch and shared admiration by the rest of the family, I pleaded with mom to let him stay in his fishbowl on the kitchen sink.  She most reluctantly agreed and there Tommy perched for the next year or so.

The family back then always had a beef butchered so we had a proliferation of hamburger. Mom fed Tommy a fat rich diet of raw hamburger balls and it quickly showed. Tommy started growing at an alarming rate.

One day, mom was about the twice-weekly duty of washing Tommy and cleaning his bowl.  When she reached in and picked Tommy up, there was a problem. She couldn’t get him through the opening in the fishbowl. Tommy was too fat to get out.

When dad came home from work, mom blurted out, “The #@??””!! turtle has outgrown the fishbowl.”

Dad calmly said, “Get a big towel while I get my hammer.”

I was horrified thinking Tommy was about to take one for the team. I was sure dad was going to smash him with his hammer.

Dad had mom dump out the water and rocks in the bowl, and put the towel in the sink. Then dad placed the fishbowl on its side with Tommy in it in the sink on top of the towel. He then shoved some of the towel into the fishbowl on top of Tommy.

I was almost in tears as Dad raised his hammer.

A tap of Dad’s framing hammer split the fishbowl neatly in two pieces. Reaching down, he picked Tommy up, turned to mom and said here’s Jackie Bob’s #@??””!! turtle.

Realizing Tommy had outgrown his haunts, the folks convinced me it was time for Tommy to go back to his friends in the wild.

With great sorrow, I went with mom and dad down to the baptizing hole at grandpa’s farm and together, we set Tommy free. At the time, they told me Tommy most likely would come back and visit.

My infatuation with turtles continued when at 8 years old, Mom mentioned she had talked with Lila Bell and her husband Lowell had caught a big snapping turtle full of eggs.

My eyes lit up like Christmas morning. Turtle Eggs!

At my constant unwavering insistence, mom finally caved-in and took me to see Lowell about the turtle eggs.

Sure enough, Lowell had just finished butchering the big snapping turtle and there were 18 leathery eggs lying in a pile, all a little bigger than a ping pong ball. Lowell graciously gave me the eggs, laughing to himself wondering what I was going to do with them?

Lowell said, “Are you going to cook ‘em? I like my eggs scrambled.”

“No Mr. Bell, I’m going to hatch them.”

Sacking up my precious turtle eggs in a bread bag, I couldn’t wait until I got home.

As soon as I was home, I ran upstairs to get my turtle book and read up on snapping turtle eggs and nests.

Scrounging one of dad’s good, five-gallon lard buckets, I filled it half full of dirt and lay in a two-inch layer of sand. On top of the sand, I carefully arranged the 18 turtle eggs and covered them with four inches of sand. Once completed, I put the lard can out of the way behind the house.

And, I promptly forgot about it.

In late August, I was picking up sticks in the side yard so Dad could mow and I saw the forgotten lard can next to the house.

Walking over to the can, I looked in and it looked like the sand was undulating and moving up and down.

Pulling some of the short weeds that had grown in the can, I was greeted by a tiny head poking out and looking at me. It was a baby turtle. And it turned out there were 12 more. Amazingly, 13 of the 18 eggs hatched. Each baby turtle was about the size of a quarter and had part of their egg sack still attached to the underside of their shell.

I had no idea how exciting the news of my baby turtles was until a photographer from the Rushville Republican came down and took a picture of me holding a few of the baby turtles.

I kept one baby snapping turtle for myself and gave the others away in pairs to friends and other fellow turtle lovers.

Yes, I can truthfully say, “I’m your turtle mama!”

But Tommy hasn’t come back to visit, even on Mother’s Day!

‘till next time, 

Jack

Readers can contact the author by writing to this publication or e-mail Jack at jackspaulding1971@outlook.com. Spaulding’s books, “The Best Of Spaulding Outdoors” and “The Coon Hunter And The Kid,” are available from Amazon.com as a paperback or Kindle download.