Pump Station Trail, Eno River (Durham, North Carolina)

This morning—before the sun had fully thawed the crisp air—we hiked along the Eno River on the Pump Station Trail in Durham, North Carolina. About thirty feet off the trail, beyond the crumbling remains of a towering stone dam, sits a small pond carved into Carolina mud by spillover from the old structure.

In spring, the pond ripples with the sporadic jolting of tiny, gilled salamander larvae. In summer, it becomes home to mayfly and stonefly larvae. In autumn, birds dip their beaks into the shallows for a quick drink. But in winter, the pond reveals a more mysterious—perhaps even sinister—side.

As we stepped to the pond’s edge, the low winter sun angled through the trees and illuminated a strange, motionless shape beneath an inch-thick layer of hard ice. A thick, dark head with small eyes. Clawed feet. A dark brown shell, slightly ridged. The scattered details slowly resolved into a medium-sized adult common snapping turtle (Chelydra serpentina), suspended in apparent animation. Nearby, the image was replicated in miniature: a young snapper, its shell not even two inches across, frozen in place among unmoving air bubbles.

We stood stunned—almost as motionless as the anomalous shapes that had captured our attention. Were the turtles hibernating? Were they dead? I stopped one of our group members, who had started to reach for a stick to prod the frozen specimen, with a sharp comment. Instead, we simply gawked—and then hurried back for the camera.

In the end, I still don’t know whether those two turtles—like taxidermy models set into a habitat diorama—were dead or hibernating. Brown and Brooks (1994) describe three general types of snapping turtle hibernacula. Often, turtles wedge beneath logs or sticks along streambanks, or burrow into deep mud in marshy areas. But sometimes they remain unburied and visible through the ice. These two snappers may simply have been waiting for the spring thaw, poised for reanimation. I like to think of them that way. Yet in that state they also seemed vulnerable—to the probing hunger of foxes and raccoons. Is this any better than being starved for air, or damaged by deep freezing, never to stir again?

I often hear people wax poetic about “returning to nature,” as if nature equates to gentleness, justice, and harmony. But nature is as cruel as it is kind. And as humans, we would be remiss to forget that we are part of nature, whether we like it or not.

References
Brown GP, Brooks RJ. 1994. Characteristics of and fidelity to hibernacula in a northern population of snapping turtles, Chelydra serpentina. Copeia. 1994(1):222–226.
Costanzo JP, Baker PJ, Lee RE Jr. 2006. Physiological responses to freezing in hatchlings of freeze-tolerant and freeze-intolerant turtles. Journal of Comparative Physiological Biology. 176:697–707.