by Linda Beck
In an age of social distancing, masks, and gatherings limited to reduced numbers, the South Orange Pool certainly offered a summer respite for many of us in the village.
As it turns out, the shrubs just outside of the gate also offered a sanctuary, not for village Homo Sapiens, but for a nest of leathery little snapping turtle eggs, laid on June 11th by one of the females living in the Rahway or Meadowland Pond just over the bridge.
Our town snapping turtles have been a source of intrigue and celebration for years. From Spring to Fall, 5-6 adults can be seen pretty regularly at the Skate House edge or along the south side by the Middle School, sometimes looking for snacks and other times basking motionless, seeming to be dead, only to grumpily move toward the middle of the pond when carefully prodded by an SOEC member, the DPW crew, or Health Department official.
The South Orange snapping turtles are Common Snapping Turtles (Chelydra Serpentina, pronounced chell-AY-druh serp-en-TEEN-uh), and they are the largest turtles in the state of New Jersey other than Sea Turtles. You’ll see many turtles at the Meadowland Park Pond, but most are an invasive species called the red-eared slider, the result of pet releases followed by prolific breeding. (To read more about our efforts to educate the public about invasive turtles and their detrimental effect on the eco-system through a grant awarded to us by ANJEC, click here.) The Common Snapping Turtle is a native species and its carapace (or upper shell) ranges in size from 8″ – 18.5″; that’s huge – imagine a desk ruler and a half. Males rarely leave the water at all and females only leave to lay their eggs in the spring, as did our turtle mother on June 11th when she ventured to her chosen spot by the pool house.
The nest was discovered by the big old softies at the Department of Public Works. Mike Candarella, Head of DPW, gave a ring over to our South Orange Health Officer, John Festa. John passed on the advice from experts at St. Hubert’s to leave the turtle eggs where they are, but try to make them a little less conspicuous to give them a better chance at being left undisturbed. The turtle eggs developed in the safety of their hidden nest for just under 3 months.
On the morning of Friday, September 4th, pool patrons were politely told by pool staff to watch their step as a determined train of baby turtles emerged into the sunlight and crossed the pool entrance path to begin their lives above ground… or, more accurately, in the water.
Here are the challenges in the turtle baby obstacle course and a record of the extraordinary odds beaten by these little tykes. Between 80-90% of eggs don’t make it to the hatch date as the nests are discovered and devoured by skunks or raccoons. A Common Snapping Turtle lays between 20-40 eggs per clutch. According to Kevin Tamayo and Marie Fagan, (right) who acted as nursemaids when the babies ran amuck, they stopped counting turtles after 20. That means that, if 40 were laid, at least half of the clutch made it through the gestation period.
But nature is complicated, and the second challenge for the hatched clutch is to get to the water without becoming a delicious lunch for snakes, or birds (hawks, and egrets, but also even smaller birds like crows). The pool staff painstakingly plopped each baby into a box, carried them to the pond edge and urged them to take their first plunge, denying any would be turtle snackers. Even though we’ll lose a number of them to the larger snappers (cannibalism… sigh), large fish, and aquatic spear-beaked birds, we’re already starting at a higher breeding success rate.
It’s been years since we’ve seen a decent number of juveniles (only one was spotted last year), so this is good news for our Common Snapping Turtle even though, thankfully, it does not share the sad distinction of being a NJ State Endangered Species like the Bog Turtle, or NJ State Threatened Species like the Wood Turtle.
Next time you’re down at the pond, see if you can spot some snapper babies swimming around. And take a closer look at what looks like an enormous rock or lump of pond muck. See if it has a head, some limbs, and an alarmingly long spiked tail. This is one of our distinguished town residents. I’m sure it’ll be happy to see you. Or it’ll find you annoying and immediately bury itself in some mud.
“The kind we like.”
SPECIES IDENTIFICATION HINT: If you see a turtle basking on the shore around the pond, it’s not a snapper. It’s almost certainly a Red-Eared Slider. At this point, Trustee Walter Clarke, the regular recipient of my turtle-concerned phone calls, would ask me, “Is this the kind we LIKE? Or the kind we don’t like?” to which I would answer, “The kind we DON’T like, unfortunately.”
WANT MORE INFO ON THE COMMON SNAPPING TURTLE? Visit:
NJ Fish and Wildlife
Connecticut DEEP
South Orange Environmental Commission & Green Team 