About the Common Snapping Turtle Drawing
I have encountered some very large Common Snapping Turtles (Chelydra serpentina) over the years, and few living reptiles appear more prehistoric at close range. Large males can exceed fifty pounds, with massive heads, hooked jaws, long tails, powerful limbs, and heavy bodies that seem almost too large for their shells. When one of those animals rises on its legs and turns to face you, it has the presence of something that wandered out of a much earlier geological age.
While I was a professor, my students and I captured the North Carolina state-record Common Snapping Turtle during one of our mark-recapture studies. He weighed 53 pounds and immediately became a local celebrity. The story attracted considerable media attention and even appeared on CNN, although the turtle himself seemed thoroughly unimpressed by his fame.
We assigned each turtle captured an individual letter code, and by complete coincidence his code was RHINO. It could not have suited him better. His immense head and heavy body were formidable, and his claws looked more like bear claws than anything most people would expect to find on a turtle.
Because this was a long-term study, we captured RHINO several more times. He was never pleased to see us. Each recapture produced the same general response: obvious recognition that the large bipedal hominids had returned, followed by a forceful demonstration that he preferred to be left alone. Considering that we had hauled him from the water, measured him, weighed him, and marked him, his attitude was entirely reasonable.
Common Snapping Turtles have an undeserved reputation for being relentlessly aggressive. In the water, they usually attempt to escape, remain concealed, or swim away when approached. They are powerful predators and scavengers, but they generally have little interest in confronting people.
On land, however, the situation is very different. A snapping turtle away from water is exposed, frightened, and unable to retreat with the ease it has in a pond or creek. Unlike many other turtles, it cannot withdraw its enormous head and limbs completely into its relatively small shell. Its long neck, powerful jaws, claws, and defensive lunges are therefore its principal protection.
A snapper facing a person on land is not looking for a fight. It is a vulnerable aquatic animal confronted by a towering primate—sometimes a well-intentioned biologist and sometimes a less well-informed bipedal hominid with a red neck. From the turtle’s perspective, snapping is not aggression. It is an emphatic request for the threat to keep its distance.
Their strike can nevertheless be remarkably fast. The neck folds back along the sides of the body and can extend suddenly, allowing the head to reach much farther than many people expect. The jaws are built not simply for biting but for seizing fish, frogs, crayfish, snakes, young waterfowl, small mammals, and other prey. Snapping Turtles also consume carrion and substantial amounts of aquatic vegetation, making them opportunistic feeders rather than indiscriminate killers.
Much of their hunting occurs through stillness. A turtle may rest nearly buried in mud or vegetation, with only the eyes and nostrils exposed, and wait for prey to move within reach. The body that appears so cumbersome on land becomes remarkably well suited to an underwater life of concealment, sudden movement, and immense leverage.
They can also travel surprising distances over land. Females leave the water to nest, and both sexes may move between wetlands when ponds dry, flood, or become unsuitable. Those journeys expose them to vehicles and people who may kill them out of fear. Large adults are especially valuable to a population because they represent decades of survival and many years of potential reproduction.
An animal such as RHINO did not become enormous by accident. He had survived predators, droughts, winters, roads, fishing gear, habitat changes, and countless other dangers long enough to reach a size attained by very few individuals. His scars, worn shell, enormous claws, and thoroughly uncooperative disposition were all parts of that history.
In Old Snap, I wanted to capture the combination of age, immense strength, and watchful stillness that defines a large snapping turtle. The close composition places the animal beneath the arch of its rugged shell, drawing attention to the sharply focused eye, hooked beak, folded skin, heavy forelimbs, and extraordinary claws.
Graphite allowed me to emphasize the weathered textures of the shell and skin without distraction. The turtle appears motionless, but there is tension in that stillness. The eye is alert, the head is positioned beneath the shell, and the animal seems fully prepared to defend the small amount of personal space available to it.
The title reflects both age and attitude. Old Snap is not a monster and not an aggressor. He is a powerful survivor—an ancient-looking, mostly aquatic animal that would prefer to disappear quietly beneath the water but is more than capable of making his objections clear when approached on land.
Old Snap is a graphite-pencil wildlife drawing of a Common Snapping Turtle (Chelydra serpentina) by Michael E. Dorcas for Tantilla Art.