Watch your fingers

If you’ve never contemplated the anatomy of a turtle, you should. Its rib cage is fused to its shell, and its shoulder blades are inside the rib cage. Now think about how you would look with your shoulders inside your ribs.And while some turtles tuck their necks sideways into their shell, others have neck vertebrae that stack vertically, almost folding the neck inside— turtles such as the ubiqitous road-crawling snapping turtle.What seems like a short neck on a rather cranky-looking turtle can actually extend out to approximately half the length of its shell.So don’t get too close.“They got their name because they bite,” said Julie Victoria, a wildlife biologist with the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection (DEP). “And they will bite. They don’t have a pleasant disposition.” Snapping turtles seem to be everywhere at this time of year. Although they spend the majority of their time in the water, female snapping turtles journey onto land to lay their eggs in May and June.An ideal nesting site for a snapping turtle is a sunny area near water, with soft dirt or sand. When females go looking for the perfect spot, many times they end up crossing roads, laying on the edge of roads or checking out peoples’ gardens that have newly turned soil. So motorists and gardeners should beware.If you see one of these turtles, large or small, parked in the middle of the road and you want to try to move it, don’t pick the snapper up by the tail. Reach around to the back part of its shell. The tail is a continuation of the turtle’s spine, and picking it up that way could injure it.“And be careful,” Victoria reiterated. “Don’t put yourself in jeopardy.”Snapping turtles, which can live to be anywhere from 40 to 100 years and can grow to be 9 to 16 inches long, are common in Connecticut. They lay approximately 20 to 60 eggs at a time, perhaps the most of any turtle. They have a high mortality rate when young, but by the time their shell is 3 inches long, the snappers have no more natural predators.They are omnivorous, feeding mostly on vegetation but also baby waterfowl, fish, frogs and carrion.Although at this time of year snapping turtles can seem to be a nuisance, they are one of the few creatures left that look as prehistoric as they are. The ancestors of today’s turtles appeared nearly 230 million years ago, in the Middle Triassic period.