Over this past Labor Day weekend, my friend and I were fishing on my pond master boat. We were rounding a corner and heard this loud thrasing in the water. We cut the trolling motor and drifted until we could see into a cove.

My friend was in the front of the boat, and as we rounded the corner, we could see (about 40' away), what looked like an animal head sticking out of the water and about 4' away from the head, a webbed foot sticking out of the water also.

My buddy said "that looks like a river otter," and I quitely said back "that's the last thing I want to hear." As I stared at this thing, I felt myself agreeing that it was an otter. It looked just like the nature show clips of an otter playing in the water.

I pulled out the oars and slowly started rowing towards it. As we were getting closer, the John Carpenter movie, "The Thing," was going through my head. Within about 35' of the writhing mass, we still couldn't tell what it was.

Once we got witin about 20', we could tell.

It was two big snapping turtles doing the nasty.

Excerpt from Robert Crais' "The Monkey's Raincoat:"
"She took another microscopic bite of her sandwich, then pushed it away. Maybe she absorbed nutrients from her surroundings."