Update.
OK, I cleaned both turtles after keeping them in fresh water for 5 days with water changes everyday. Found some instructions on the internet and tried the two diffrent methods (one per turtle) that seemed the most popular. Cut their heads off early Sat and hung them up to bleed out. After 4 hours I started to clean them. Apparently it takes quite awhile for their nerve endings to die. Anyone ever try to clean an animal that keeps fighting you? Even 4 hours after hanging them and 2 hours after removing their hearts, the heart continued to pulse. Creepy! Anyway, they were not all that hard to clean. I found the easiest way to skin them was to dunk them in boiling water for 1-2 min followed by a cold water bath. Think of a boiled chicken. The boiling water stiffend up the collagen in the skin and made it easier to grasp. It also seemed to help it slide right off. If anyone is interested they are a lot like chicken. The neck and back straps are white meat and the legs are dark meat. French turtle soup was great and even my kids loved it. Took just over an hour to total clean 2 of them but it was worth it.
