Wildlife Adventures: Snapping Turtle

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snapping turtle face

Living in the country is always an adventure of some kind and today was no different. I wasn’t even dressed for outside when the adventure started with the dogs out in the backyard alerting to a stranger in their territory. Looking out the bathroom window I spied the largest turtle I’ve seen here on our property.

A calm moment before the snapping turtle tried to attack again.

To keep the dogs from breaking the fence down to get at the intruder, I hurriedly dressed and ran outside with a box, planning to grab the turtle and transport it in the box back to the pond where it belonged. What I didn’t realize when I saw the turtle’s shell from inside the house was that this wasn’t just any turtle that would pull its head and legs back into its shell and let me pick it up.

Immediately upon walking near the turtle, the thing tried to attack me. I have never seen a turtle move THAT fast. It’s been a while since I moved that fast too! Having a rapidly approaching turtle hissing at me while snapping its beak trying to chomp on me, got me moving backwards in a hurry.

After a few choice words at the turtle I realized that not only was this a snapping turtle, but it was not going to be as easy to relocate as the tortoises and turtles I normally have encountered. I tried to come from behind it to grab its tail and the back end of the shell, only to have it lunge at me and actually bring the front portion of its body off the ground. No matter which way I moved, it would turn to face me head on and continued to hiss, snap, lunge, and even run toward me. Who’d have thought a turtle could run? Obviously the box I had brought to put the turtle in was no match for this large, heavy, and aggressive beast.

Full view of the snapping turtle from the top, part of its tail is out of the photo.

Once a 5 gallon bucket and a shovel was retrieved, I went back to face this monster. He was heavy, at least 10 pounds. Trying to get near it with the shovel, even from behind, I was met with an increasingly aggressive turtle who attacked the shovel and latched onto the shovel blade with his beak. I had to yank the shovel away to get it out of the grasp of its beak.

I finally managed to flip the thing on its back and farther away from the fence so I had more room to work. What astounded me was how quickly that turtle managed to right itself. It was on its back for less than a minute before it was quite easily able to use its strong neck and legs to flip itself over onto the right side.

Eventually the turtle was scooped, headfirst, into the 5 gallon bucket using the shovel. For a size comparison, the turtle just barely fit into the bucket side-to-side with its shell. And for its length – several inches of its shell, basically its “crotch” and legs and tail were sticking out of the bucket. Its head and neck was about as big around as my wrist. It kept trying to right itself inside the bucket but fortunately there wasn’t enough room for it to get itself turned over, otherwise it probably would have come out of that bucket and bitten me.

Snapping turtle upside down. It turned its head backward to push itself back over onto the right side. Its neck and limbs are very strong, with long claws on its feet.

The trip down to the pond seemed to take forever, even though it was relatively fast using the golf cart. I drove sitting sideways to keep an eye on the turtle in the back of the cart. There was so much noise coming from that bucket I was worried it was going to figure out how to get out or at least tip the bucket over and then attack me from behind.

Down at the pond, the turtle was shaken out of the bucket into tall grass where the pond has exceeded its bank (we’ve had 9 inches of rain in the last two weeks). It was still angry but seemed happier to be out of the bucket and fortunately did not try to attack me again. I left it alone and when I went back a few minutes later to check on things, the turtle had disappeared.

While I’m glad that our property has diverse wildlife, I am a bit worried that this big snapper might hurt one of our guineas or chickens that sometimes enjoy wading in the shallow parts of the pond. Hopefully our chickens and guineas will steer clear of this sucker’s powerful beak when they go wading.

To learn a bit more about snapping turtles, you can check out this info on the Herps of Texas webpage. Texas Parks and Wildlife has a PDF you can download to learn more about Texas turtles.

According to what I’ve learned, this snapper here at our place is a common snapping turtle, not an alligator snapping turtle. If it had been an alligator snapper, I would have reported it to Parks and Wildlife. Alligator snappers are a threatened species and are being studied by the biologists at TPWD.

Learning to live in harmony with wildlife is never dull. It can be difficult, but most of the time it is rewarding. And fortunately, no injuries occurred to humans, turtles, or dogs with our wildlife adventure today.

Posted in Animals, Nature, Uncategorized

Recipe: Fluffy Biscuits

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Biscuits rising but not yet browned in the oven. YUM!

Biscuits rising but not yet browned in the oven. YUM!

I’ve tried a number of biscuit recipes in my search for THE recipe.  It took some tweaking, but I finally have a recipe worthy of being the go-to recipe whenever biscuits are on the menu.   The results have been consistently good, so if you’re wanting to take the plunge into making homemade biscuits, this is a recipe I can vouch for.

 

 

 

Fluffy Biscuit Recipe

2 cups all purpose flour

3 1/4 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp sugar

5 1/2 TBS butter, cold, cut into small pieces*

approx. 1 cup buttermilk**

Preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

Measure dry ingredients and mix them in a bowl.  Using a pastry blender or a fork, cut thecuttinginbutterlogo pieces of butter into the dry ingredients.  You should have a pebbly texture with visible chunks of butter.  Add enough buttermilk to make a dough that holds together but is not too sticky (amount of buttermilk may vary slightly depending on the flour you use as well as humidity in your kitchen).

Roll out dough to desired thickness (I prefer at least 1/2 inch thick) – use a dusting of flour if needed to keep dough from sticking to counter.  Cut out biscuits to desired size (photos show biscuits cut out with a wide-mouth Mason jar, which is about the size of store bought Grands biscuits).

Place biscuits on a lightly greased baking sheet.  Bake at 400 degrees for approximately 10 minutes, until biscuits have risen and are the desired shade of golden brown.

Brushing the tops of the biscuits with melted butter before and after baking makes them extra tasty.

*To get a stick of butter into small pieces, cut off the 5 1/2 TBS from the stick, unwrap it and put it on a plate standing tall.  Slice it into 3-4 slices.    Put the slices back together and turn the butter rectangle onto its side, cut another 3-4 slices long ways in the butter.  Finally, cut across the rectangular slices to get small pieces of butter.  Make sure to keep the butter cold – put it back in the refrigerator for a few minutes before adding to the dry ingredients if your kitchen is warm and the butter softened while you were cutting it up.  Use your fingers to separate the pieces of butter as you put them into the bowl.

 

You can substitute 5 1/2 TBS beef tallow or 1/3 cup vegetable shortening in place of the butter if desired.  I highly recommend brushing the biscuits with melted butter before and after baking if using beef tallow or shortening. 

 

**Don’t have buttermilk?  Put 1 TBS of white vinegar or lemon juice into a measuring cup and add regular milk to make 1 cup.  Mix and let it sit in the refrigerator to stay cold while you are mixing the other ingredients.  The vinegar/lemon juice will sour and thicken the milk.  You need to use soured milk/buttermilk for this recipe not only for taste, but also for the chemical reaction between the buttermilk and the baking powder & soda to get a good rise in the biscuits.  Buttermilk info link

 

Posted in Bread, Food

DIY Plumbing: Drain Clog

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If you’ve ever called a plumber, you know how expensive they are.  Not to mention that plumbing problems frequently occur at the most inopportune times – like 10 p.m. when you’re getting ready for bed.  And if you’re like us and prefer to avoid using poisonous chemicals around the house, you’re left with even fewer options when you have water backing up into your sink or bathtub.

I had to unclog a drain recently when my husband was not available and realized that there may be people who don’t know about this handy gadget to unclog drains.  It’s called a drain cleaning bladder.  It costs anywhere from around $10 to $25 and is reusable – unlike a container of toxic drain cleaning chemicals.  It’s easy to use and fast, no waiting around for chemicals to try to eat the clog and then having to wait around until it’s time to pour hot water down your drain.  While there is the possibility that it won’t work on your particular clog, there’s no guarantee that a bottle of drain cleaner will work either.  So far we’ve never had a clog that the drain cleaning bladder did not fix, but we have had failed drain cleaning attempts using chemicals.

The drain cleaning bladder is a rubber balloon that you attach to a water hose and it blasts the clog through the pipe with a jet of water.  There is a hole in the bottom of the thing and when the rubber balloon has expanded with water, filling the drain pipe until it can’t expand anymore, it then releases the water through the hole in a small, forceful stream.  You can see a diagram of how it works in the photo of the particular drain cleaning bladder package that we have.

If you don’t have a long enough water hose to reach the problem drain, then you may need a few more parts to hook up the drain cleaning bladder to a faucet.  There are adapters that will screw onto your faucet, with the other end that screws onto the water hose.  You’ll then screw the hose onto your drain cleaning bladder.  If you’re handy and have an old hose lying around, you can cut the old hose to a smaller length, add the correct hardware to the cut end so it will screw onto either your faucet or the drain bladder, and then you’ll be ready when you have a drain clog.  If you don’t have an old hose or want to make things easier, you can get small sections of water hose, usually called a Leader Hose,  and use this to attach to your faucet and drain cleaning bladder.  If you are a more advanced DIY-er, putting in strategically placed clean-out ports into your drains will make things even easier for you.

You may need to go to a real hardware or plumbing supply store to find a drain cleaning bladder or order one online.  Many of the large home improvement stores have plenty of things to make your house pretty, but we’ve found they are often lacking in basic items for true DIY home repairs. I would recommend that you get your drain cleaning bladder and any hose/faucet hookup system now, BEFORE you need it.  Clogged drains rarely happen at convenient times and you’ll save a lot of time and headache if you’re prepared for them.  drainclogbladder

Posted in DIY, Farm Life
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