What's In Your Yard?

I'm not sure why, but all of a sudden I had the "what's in your wallet?" commercial in my head, hence the title. :o)

Every year about this time we have snapping turtles. Big, huge, mean snapping turtles. They come out of the surrounding swamps to find a place to lay their eggs. We get 5-6 different ones every spring. Yesterday there was one in our neighbor's yard. Today one is in ours.

The alpacas are not very fond of these turtles. I think maybe it's because they can't really tell what they are. They can see them moving across the yard, but they don't stick up above the grass much.

It takes each turtle 2-3 hours to cross our yard depending on which way they are going. The entire time they are visible to the 'pacas, the 'pacas are screeching. If you've never heard an alpaca screech...well, I think I need to invest in a pair of ear plugs during turtle season.

This particular turtle's shell was around 12"x14". I'm only guessing though since I wasn't getting close enough to measure it.

I got a video of the turtle walking. It's so funny because it walks a couple feet then takes a 10 minute break before walking again. I also was able to get 1 video of my watch-girl Athena screeching at the turtle. I swear, the second they see the camera they shut up no matter what hazard they think they see.