By Dom DiFalco
Every year starting in April, Arrowhead Reptile Rescue near Cincinnati, Ohio starts receiving phone calls about injured turtles. Hit by cars, run over by lawnmowers, chewed on by dogs, even dropped from the sky by birds of prey into parking lots, we have received and rehabilitated them all. This year, one of the first calls we got was from a local dog warden who calls me every few weeks letting me know they’ve found an injured turtle or calling to confirm that the large snake in a local park is not a man-eating retic, but rather a large rat snake.
When I got the call saying there is an injured snapping turtle, I was told it had been hit by six cars and didn’t look good. My hopes were not high when the SPCA truck rolled up to my apartment, delivering me a blood-soaked, cardboard box. Staring up at me from the box was an adult female common snapper with multiple wounds and an angry, open mouth letting me know she had some fight left in her, the best we can ask for in these situations. These animals are more resilient than we can ever truly appreciate, and this is one of the best cases of that.
A.R.R. is run by Damien Oxier who is a vet tech that dedicates his time “off” to helping the wildlife that comes to his door every day. Operating out of his house, we head downstairs into our quarantine and medical room so we can finally get a better look at her injuries. Knowing she had a bit of work to go through, she was given a local anesthetic and we waited for it to set in before we began. We clean the wounds with a chlorhexidine/water mixture poured across her shell, flushing out dirt and debris that came along with the tire tracks.
There was obvious trauma to her shell from the multiple cars, but the biggest concern is the large piece of plastic lodged in the center. A gentle tug on the protruding plastic let’s us know that it is deep into the musculature of the animal. Using a scalpel and a tight grip on forceps, Damien worked at clearing the injured tissue around the plastic piece. It was significantly deeper than expected upon first inspection.
After a few minutes of gentle tugging, a four-inch JackPad from a Mercedes Benz, complete with a serial number, was loosened and emerged from the back of the turtle. This four inch piece of plastic was obviously dislodged from one of the many cars that didn’t move quick enough to miss this prehistoric creature crossing the road. A sigh of relief washed across myself as I realized the jackpad came out in two complete pieces, indicating there were no further fragments stuck inside the back of the snapper. Though it looked rough, we were confident that the snapper would recover from her wounds. The large gash in her back and fracturing from there was clear of debris and ready for the beginning of reconstruction.
For a bigger turtle like this with these injuries, we started with leaving the wound open and allowing it to fully dry from the washing solution. After this, we started applying clean gauze and tape to the largest part of the wound, replaced every few days with the chlorhexidine/water wash in between. We let the wash thoroughly dry and continued the gauze cycle until we could begin the epoxy coating. Gauze, mesh, and epoxy were layered on, creating a firm surface, which would allow the shell to safely heal and still protect her just as well in the wild.
Unfortunately, before she was released, this snapper laid us a clutch of a few dozen eggs. Without the ability to incubate, the eggs were not viable and our ecosystem missed out on dozens of baby snappers from this rehabilitated mama. It is very common that the injured turtles we received are gravid, as most are often hit by cars while searching for a good location to lay their eggs. With the help of Arrowhead, we can only hope that in the future she is able to go on and procreate, as she was successfully rehabilitated and released in early July, after just over a month in A.R.R.’s facility.
