Born

What looks like a dollop of manure dropped from the spreader that regularly travels this road turns out to be a just-hatched snapping turtle headed for water. Supposedly he instinctively knows which way to go—by scent? by terrain?—but this one is bearing straight for the cornfield, away from Brekke Lake, where his indifferent mother has likely been swimming, her labor of digging and laying forgotten, for the last three months, and where his father has probably been living incognito for just as many years (in turtles, a single mating provides enough sperm to fertilize eggs for several seasons).

His shell is the size of a half-dollar; his tail, a little longer. His head and legs already have the fat, secure look of an animal that does not have to worry about predators. But it is premature: I notice one of his siblings a few yards down the road, smashed. I pinch his carapace between my thumb and forefinger, admittedly, in spite of his tiny size, a bit afraid. Yet snappers get a bad rap. Pester an adult snapper on land and you could lose a digit, but in the swimming hole the snapper glides away from your kicking foot to more practical foods: aquatic plants and minnows. I carry him home to a plastic terrarium I fill with a half-inch of water, a trilobite fossil from a Kansas friend’s farm that’s been on display on the windowsill, and a Tupperware lid that I garnish with a few fresh vegetables.

That night, I fantasize about keeping him until he is too large to slide down the gullet of a great blue heron. But he swims relentlessly against the corner of the terrarium as if his birth has been a joke, as if to say, Is this all? He doesn’t touch the slice of burpless cucumber or the bright shreds of carrot.

The next day, (and the next week, for I will find another like him, even further from the water) I carry the baby snapper to the lake. I place him in shallow water and he begins to swim. He keeps his head out of the water until I grow impatient, worried I have caused him to imprint on a certain depth, a depth that will surely result in his being eaten before night falls. I tap his shell and he goes under, and it is as if he is suddenly born—his journey across the road and to my house all contractions pushing him toward this moment. His front and back legs have met their proper medium like a lover, and carry him swiftly from the shore. Surrounded by a council of small fish, he hesitates, then swims through them, toward the cattails and lily pads and algae that edge the pond next to the boat slip. I watch him until he has become mud in the water. I look for him every night, but he is gone.