Notebooks, Pencils, Pens, & Snapping Turtles

Before school started we bought notebooks, erasers, backpacks, lunch boxes, paper, pencils, rulers, pens, binders,folders, new sneakers and clothes, and a briefcase type of organiser called a trapper.

Over the summer, Tommy received a very nice letter from his new teacher. It was a very sweet letter and in the letter she put out a request for a caterpillar of the Monarch Butterfly.

I thought no problem, for a mighty hunter-outdoorsman like me. Well a few days before school, we searched, and searched, and searched. We covered every stand of milkweed plants we could locate in town. I was so desperate for a Monarch Caterpillar, I found myself wading through thickets of poison ivy to reach some milkweed. Now what I thought would be an easy assignment for a old woodsman like me, turned into a humbling and complete failure. How could I not find a Monarch Caterpillar?

On the day before school, and just before nightfall washed away any hope of locating a Monarch Caterpillar, I carefully repeated my search of the few milkweed plants we have here in the field. I don't think I can possibly express the jubilation that shot through my entire body when I, at the last possible moment, found a Monarch Caterpillar.

I do not believe very many Monarch Caterpillars made it to school the first day, and I believe Tommy's caterpillar was the only one that completed its metamorphosis and was released into the wild. "He's off to Mexico" said the boy.

So not to be outdone by the boy, Jordan comes home from school on the first day and tells me she needs a baby snapping turtle for Social Studies class.

Why would you need a baby snapping turtle for Social Studies? I really thought this was some type of extremely cruel joke. I barely survived the special ops mission to locate and capture a caterpillar. How on earth will I come up with a baby snapping.

It has been my experience that a baby snapping turtle is something you stumble upon, you don't mount an all out expedition for something the size of a quarter. I would stand a better chance at locating a 20 pounder, but would I think, until the school develops a curriculum that includes, "How to attach a severed limb 101", the school may frown upon a classroom monster capable of removing a child's finger.

The Town of Mansfield has an awesome Public Woks Department, and has some really nice, kind hearted folks working hard for our town.

Recently I approached a group of guys working on our street cutting brush, and while they worked up a soaking sweat while battling the 36 inch mosquitoes we have down here, I mentioned that I was searching for a baby snapping turtle for Jordan's school project.

It was less then a week later when Glenn and Tory from the town showed up with 2 young snapping turtles, one of them the size of a quarter.

So to Glenn and Tory, THANK YOU!!! You made a kid feel very, very special when she was able to fulfill her teachers request, and you saved me he pain and agony of crawling though malaria filled swamps in a desperate attempt which would have resulted in failure and more weeks of therapy.

Snappy and Snapper will spend the Winter months as foreign exchange students, majoring in Social Studies, and return to the swamps in the spring.