Hail Mary

I worked at the Ecology Center during my first two years on staff. For whatever reason, we abbreviated it to Econ Lodge, even though that was not really an abbreviation but really a renaming. It was nothing as grand as a center or as quaint as a lodge though. It was a small building, most of it with just a roof and now walls and a couple of picnic tables. A small part was enclosed where we stored various things, mostly merit badge books, animal pelts, glass jars with nothing in them etc. The main attraction was the reptile pit. Again, curiously named because it overwhelmingly contained amphibians.

It was about 100 square feet, a big square surrounded by a 3-foot tall wall. Scouts would catch frogs, turtles and occasionally a snake and toss it in there. There was a small man made stream and pond that ran through the center. Towards the end of the summer, it would get full. Too full. There was nowhere near enough food to support the population so frogs became cannibals and ate each other. It was amazing to see, the bigger frog would simply swallow the smaller frog whole. In many cases, there was not a whole lot of relative size difference. Kind of like a 200-pound man swallowing a 160 pound man whole. Often, it took a few attempts and the smaller frog would escape from the jaws of the larger one.

The other creatures seemed to do allright. Perhaps the snakes could last long enough, even without proper food, to make it to the end of the summer. We very rarely found any dead animals in there, but that was probably because they were eaten straight away. We did try to release them all at the end of the summer. It wasn't like we kept a strict count, so I am sure we may have left a few behind.

My first summer there, the director was a woodsy lass named Mary. I think she was 23 or 24 and I was an awkward lad of 16. Naturally, I developed a huge crush on her. Looking back on it, she was quite an odd person. She once taught me, for something like 25 minutes straight, how to best walk up a set of stairs without someone hearing you. You do a series of lunges up the steps without ever fully straightening your legs. This was in no way relevant to what we were teaching. Perhaps if we offered the burglary merit badge, but we did not.
She fancied herself a bit of a martial artist, but also loved to commune with nature. So she would get a sturdy tree branch, fashion it into a staff of sorts and go into the woods and make up martial arts moves to do on the trees. Really bizarre, in order to become one with nature she had to fight the trees, with trees.
She was also permanently getting into wrestling matches with this other staff member. Of course, there were all sorts of erotic over, under and side tones.

They really got into it, every day at lunch they would wrestle and the rest of the staff would watch. She was dating this other guy, but for whatever reason he tolerated this wrestling. Kind of like an open relationship as long as it involved the possibility of combat. Even though she was small, she was pretty strong and the wrestling matches were usually pretty evenly matched. Most of the time they would end up aggressively spooning each other, no-one was able to get the upper hand. Maybe the dude was really smart and realized that if he simply knocked her around a lot the wrestling matches would come to a quick end.

I never got the chance to wrestle Mary. I did get the chance to do something far more dangerous and far less pleasurable for her though. This was near the beginning of the summer and we were collecting some frogs to get the reptile pit started. It was Mary, me and a few scouts. All of a sudden Mary points to a giant snapping turtle in a small pond. I thought she was pointing it out to be careful. That was not the case. She wanted me to catch it to add it to the reptile pit. Had anyone else suggested it, I would have not given it a second thought and just walked away. Since Mary suggested it, and since she was a real live woman and all, I thought “what the hell, I’ll give it a whirl”?

At this point, I knew nothing about snapping turtles. Mary solemnly told me that these wily bastards can reach very far with their necks, like to their back feet and the best way to get them was to grab them by their tail. I took this knowledge in like I was a professional reptile rustler and started to make my move.
It wasn’t like this guy was sunning himself on a rock where I could easily approach. He was in a small pool, with a waterfall raining down making it difficult to see the water below. It was big too, probably 35 pounds or so. Growing up, I had heard how these guys can snap off a finger pretty easily. For whatever reason, it worked. I reached down, grabbed him by the tail and pulled him out. He was mad. Hissing, big powerful jaws open and thrashing his head about. It was then that I realized that we did not have anything we could put him in to get him to the reptile pit about a quarter mile away. So I had to walk with him, making sure to hold him far enough away from my body so he couldn’t latch onto anything.
He was way too big for the pit, he occupied an entire corner. He was the star attraction though because most of the time you don’t get to see a snapping turtle up close. He was too big to hide in the little man made stream, so he was forced to hang out in the corner. He lived through the summer and I was glad when it was time to release him. This time it was a lot easier as he was pretty easy to approach and this time we had some sort of crate to put him in for transport.

The next summer, Mary was gone. Doing what, I have no idea, but no doubt it was something absurd. I never did see the snapping turtle again. It is for the best, I am not sure I would have gotten lucky a second time.