A female snapping turtle recently was found injured beside a Bangor road. It didn’t survive, but the eggs it was carrying just might, thanks to the expertise and teamwork of a local veterinarian and a seasoned wildlife rehabilitator.
Upon being discovered on June 15, the turtle was brought to Penobscot Veterinary Services in Bangor, where it was determined that the animal had severe damage to its head and spine and wouldn’t survive. After the turtle was euthanized, Dr. Laura Leighton extracted 38 eggs from its body and brought them to the wildlife rehabilitation clinic run by Acadia Wildlife Foundation in Bar Harbor.
“I’m never as successful as the mother turtle,” Ann Rivers, director of Acadia Wildlife Foundation, said about creating the ideal conditions for the eggs to hatch. “But I do what I can.”
At the clinic, Rivers has buried the eggs, which are slightly larger than golf balls, in two containers filled with a hatching medium, a gravel-like material made specifically for incubating turtle eggs. There they’ll remain for about three months, with Rivers adding water to the containers on a regular basis to simulate rain and create the humid environment they need to hatch in the fall.
For Rivers, this process is nothing new. In fact, she receives turtle eggs to incubate at least once a year, and it’s always from turtles that have been struck by vehicles.
“Everybody says, ‘Why in the world would they lay eggs at the side of the road?’ But they do know what they’re doing,” Rivers said. “They’re picking a gravely medium that is just right, then they put the eggs at the right depth so they can hatch properly.”
Snapping turtles will travel for miles trying to find the best location to bury their eggs, Rivers said. And that journey usually involves crossing plenty of roads, one of the most dangerous places for them to be. With a tough shell and mean bite, snapping turtles don’t have many natural predators, but their natural defenses are no match for a car tire.
Each spring, Rivers receives at least a dozen injured turtles at her clinic. Some of them can be rehabilitated and released back into the wild, and some can’t.
“The biggest question when a turtle gets hit is not what happened to the shell but what’s gotten hurt inside,” she said. “A lot of times the spine is broken or there’s a severe skull fracture, and you can’t do anything about that.”
But if it’s just the shell that’s damaged, Rivers can help.
A wildlife rehabilitator for more than 20 years, she’s is one of the few people in the state licensed to receive and care for wild reptiles. Over the years, she estimates she has fixed several hundred turtle shells.
Each case is different, but she always begins her care of an injured turtle by cleaning its wounds thoroughly. And she has turtle-grade antibiotics, in case of an infection. She then lines up the cracked shell like one would set a broken bone and uses tape, wire and aquarium cement to temporarily hold the shell in place as it heals.
One thing she has to take into consideration is the turtle species because some heal differently than others. Snapping turtles, for instance, can grow back pieces of their shells while eastern painted turtles can’t. Therefore, if an eastern painted turtle comes into her care with a piece of its shell missing, she sands down any sharp edges of the shell so it doesn’t snag on vegetation as the turtle swims.
This is the job of a wildlife rehabilitator, not something for anyone to try, Rivers said.
Rehabilitating wildlife in Maine requires a special permit, which is acquired through an application and exam process.
“Always take turtles to a rehabilitator,” she said. “We have certain materials and medications. You can’t just go around doing it yourself.”
But there is something the average person can do to help turtles: Stay alert while driving, especially near wetlands. And if you see a turtle crossing a road, consider helping.
If you haven’t aided a turtle road crossing before, the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife offers a few online tips. First, if you’re driving, find a safe place to pull off the road, put your hazard lights, and check for traffic before stepping onto the road.
Smaller turtle species, such as painted turtles and Blanding’s turtles, can be picked up and carried across the road. But snapping turtles, which can grow to be more than 30 pounds, are tricky to pick up safely. Another option is to use a shovel to scoop up the turtle and carry it close to the ground. Or you can entice the turtle to bite a stick, then slowly drag it to the side of the road.
Be sure to carry any turtle in the same direction it was traveling. Once you get them safely off the road, face them in that direction. Otherwise, they may turn around and try to cross the road again, placing themselves in danger once more.
“An awful lot of people help turtles cross the road,” Rivers said. “More and more people are understanding that the turtles are there for a reason. Some people are even marking their nests so people don’t drive on top of them.”
Rivers is uncertain whether the snapping turtle eggs she received June 15 will hatch successfully in the fall, but if they do she’ll release the baby turtles in a pond or stream near the location where the mother turtle was found.
“I’m trying to keep genetics and diseases within a waterway,” she said. “They need to go back to where they would have been born.”
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