Happy Snapper Rescue

What better way to Shell-e-Brate than some releases! These are not all of them, and there’s still more to come!

All of these turtles spent the winter here, and thanks to you, they’ve all gotten a second chance to go back to the wild!

I screamed 😮, I laughed 😂, I set the 🕷️free!

This is a Dark Fishing Spider, Michigan’s largest spider!

She snuck in and spent some time with our smallest snapping turtle hatchling, who will be released too once we get a little bigger!

We've been caring for this female Eastern Snapping turtle since Fall. Eggs were not on the radar at that time, but she did have a few fractures that needed time to heal. When she started laying eggs a couple of weeks ago we were a bit surprised!

An x-ray confirmed how many eggs she still needed to lay, and a recheck was needed because she was eating her eggs too quickly for us to accurately count them to make sure she'd laid them all. When injured female turtles are coming in for care during egg laying season we always check for eggs right away because these turtles often require medication to induce them to lay their eggs. There are a couple of reasons for this.

🥚Turtles requiring months of healing will be reluctant to lay their eggs in unnatural conditions, and will continue building up layers of calcium on their shells which can lead to impaction.

🥚When turtles are healed and ready to go, we want to reduce their chances of being injured in the road again, so if they are released after they've already laid their eggs, the thought is that this will be one less worry for them.

🥚Helping these turtles lay their eggs also gives us the opportunity to help them in another way-by giving their eggs a higher chance of survival in a controlled setting with zero predation rate.

Of course, she was eating her eggs, so while they may have been fertile since snapping turtles can retain s***m for multiple seasons, we were not able to incubate them in this case. The good news is though, she is good to go once the weather cooperates!

She had a few mice for a treat today! Thank you to Lakeville Animal Clinic for your support with this.

It's a busy time of year, when turtles start crossing, but it's not quite time to release the many turtles we've been caring for through the winter.

We're looking forward to those long awaited releases, and are thankful to everyone for keeping a lookout. The reason these turtles are here receiving care is because of you, which helps us maintain hope for the future.