Twice this spring I have been in a position to save the lives of two pedestrians as they crossed a road. What makes it even more meaningful is that both walkers are considered “threatened” in Minnesota.

The first one I spotted was running, a weird description for a turtle, because it was more like swimming over the gravel road as fast as it could. I never pass up helping a Blanding’s turtle cross a road. 

After walking the turtle across the road, I peered into the front end of the shell where the shy turtle had pulled its head. I found myself smiling at the Blanding’s own perpetual, gentle smile on a face that reminds me of the most endearing alien of all time: E.T.  The turtle’s distinctive lemon-yellow throat is like a welcoming sunrise. 

I turned the turtle over to examine the bottom shell known as the plastron. The plastron is made up of scutes, resembling puzzle pieces put together. The slightly flat plastron told me it was a female turtle. The male’s bottom shell is slightly dished in.

I counted the growth rings on the scutes to get a rough idea of the turtle’s age. 

I could see 25-30 rings, but part of the scutes were worn smooth with age so it was  impossible to get a firm read. Blanding’s turtles can live to 70 years. The turtle I held was easily over three decades.

Given that it was early May, I suspect this turtle was making an overland trip from where it had spent the winter in hibernation to a shallow, warmer pond to mate. May and June are dangerous months for turtles. After mating this turtle will hike to a proper nesting area and then after the eggs are laid she will hike back to a wetland or lake for the summer. All this overland traveling might require road crossings.

The second turtle I helped, just last week, is a neighbor. I spotted her on the county road about half a mile from my house. She had already hiked about a quarter-mile from a shallow slough, where she had likely mated. Now she was headed east and still had a half mile to get to the deeper lake. I suspect she will lay her eggs in her excavated hole, near the intended lake, during the second week of June. 

With luck, the eggs will remain undiscovered by predators. Roughly sixty five days later they will hatch. Then the cookie-sized youngsters will scurry for the lake water where they are safer. That lake will be their primary home for a decade or more. They will not breed until they are 10-15 years old. Very little is known about young Blanding’s turtles. 

While all turtles can pull their legs, tail and head into the shell, the Blanding’s turtle has a flexible plastron that allows them to seal themselves up much better than most turtles in Minnesota. 

This turtle is threatened because it is losing its habitat: wetlands and adjacent open high ground. It is unlikely they will get off the “threatened” list with continual human residential and industrial development.

What would Dr. William Blanding, a keen naturalist from Philadelphia, think of the paucity of turtles that he first described to science back in the 1830s?

I encourage anyone who has the good fortune of coming across one of these gentle, ponderous, reptilian survivors to offer it some help in crossing the road. And if you are really lucky and find one nesting, please leave it alone. 

As the sun climbed out of the eastern horizon, I engaged in the spring ritual of attempted murder. And as of yesterday morning I am once more guilty on all counts of not manslaughter but turkey slaughter.

The big male turkey that I shot was totally innocent of any wrongdoing. I took advantage of his greatest weakness, his intense desire to breed as many hens as he can while fending off other similarly wired gobblers. 

All birds have tricks of the trade to attract a receptive mate. For many it involves songs, vocalizations, feather display, dance and even subtle signals that are unseen by us.  

Wild turkey gobblers show off their availability and “best-of-the-best” status by  boisterously gobbling and literally strutting his stuff. They draw attention to themselves by fanning their impressive banded tail. They can even slowly twist and turn the tail creating a silent, impressive exclamation point of sorts. While strutting, his almost gaudy, iridescent body feathers are erect, fluffed out, giving him the appearance of being larger than he really is. He drags the tips of his wings on the ground, giving them a truncated appearance.  His featherless head is fleshy, wrinkled and colored red, white and blue making it beautiful and ugly at the same time. 

A healthy dominant male might have a long fleshy protuberance growing out of its head between its eyes and its upper beak. Called a snood, it signals dominance in the company of other breeding males and it serves to attract the lady turkeys. Generally, the longer the snood the more relaxed and confident is the bird. If he is alarmed or not trying to impress turkeys, the snood retracts and its quite short.

An hour before killing the bird, as night melted from dark to gray, I set out a single decoy that resembled a hen turkey and scrambled in my camouflage attire to hide among the bony limbs of a downed oak. With my fingers, I raked away dried leaves and sticks to try and make the ground more comfortable to sit on. 

I listened to three different gobblers declaring their availability and superiority over all other males. Using a mouth call I attempted to give voice to the decoy in front of me. I have learned through the years of hunting that less is better when it comes to calling. 

Three gobblers, or toms, strutted their way across the field and all of them paused in their pursuits about one hundred yards from me. The largest and loudest of the three was obviously trying to get my darling hen decoy to come out and meet him. Impatient or bored he drifted north out of sight. 

Shortly after he left, the other two toms turned and headed back south and out of sight. And just like that there were no turkeys in view. 

I decided to pack up my calls and hurry south to a woods where I could put myself in a good position to call to the duo that had departed the scene. Just as I was ready to untangle myself from the limbs, I heard a gobble from the direction that the big boy had departed. He wasn’t that far away. So I settled in my nest and made a couple of soft yelping calls followed by comforting clucks and the most seductive turkey purrs I could manage. 

Less than two minutes later, through the thick brush I spied the patriotic colored head moving slowly and regally towards me.  His wings were reaching down on each side of his puffed self, like a mythical gunslinger with his hands poised above his holstered pistols. Each barred wing was etching the ground in fine scratches as if to show off his artistic path. He was dressed to the nines, body feathers all erect and percussively thrumming.  His tail fanned out like a rising sun. He promenaded ever so slowly in a parade of one, towards the faux turkey, the femmes fatale.

In a loud instant I ended the parade. The drum major went from full strut to a crumpled, stilled carcass. I was responsible for stopping his excitedly beating heart and stealing his strut.  I insisted the bird practice coitus interruptus finalis. 

Immediately after he died,the world got dead quiet.I did not pump my fist in celebration, nor did I shout “Oh yeah!” Instead I found myself saying in a hushed whisper, “I’m sorry.”

There was a time in my life when I might have been more robustly jubilant in making a killing shot. However as I age, I have come to realize that I am moving closer to my own termination date. Consequently, the preciousness of life is more immediate. 

I walked over to the dead bird, bent down and stroked its feathers and whispered “thank you.” The lousy part of hunting is that it requires the responsibility of killing. The day went from morning to mourning.

Moments like this have me wishing there was such a thing as “catch and release” hunting. An option would be to engage more fully in photography. However, I still enjoy eating a food that I have a direct relationship with. It’s imperative that lives, meat or vegetable, are sacrificed so that I might eat. 

I also believe that I am a product of evolution where more than 10,000 generations of humans survived and thrived by hunting and gathering. It’s part of my DNA.

In 1921-24, Knud Rasmussen, a Danish-Greenlander arctic explorer and anthropologist, traveled across the Canadian Arctic visiting bands of the indigenous Inuit. He took copious notes about their lifestyles, songs and practices. One shaman he interviewed told him, “Life’s greatest danger lies in the fact that man’s food consists entirely of souls.”

I love that quote. All food is life or was life. Whether we pulled a living carrot from its nursery soil, tore embryonic peas from its mothering pod or bought a package of chicken, we are responsible for the death of our food. 

And so this morning Nancy and I sat down to our ritual post-hunt breakfast of heart, liver, and gizzard mixed into scrambled eggs with sautéed freshly gathered nettles from the garden.  And like an echo, we whispered, “thank you.”

*Note: Each of these excellent photos were provided by Chuck Kartak. Chuck enjoys the balance of capturing live images of wildlife as well as gracing his dinner table with their meat.