A
Northwoods Almanac for July 26 – August 8, 2013
Snapping
Turtle Kills and Eats Porcupine
Elaine
and Dana Hilmer witnessed an event on July 8 that I think is quite unique – a
snapping turtle capturing a porcupine by the foot, pulling it under the water,
drowning it, and then eating it. Here’s their description:
“We
left about 9:30 am from Murray's landing and paddled up into the big bay to the
north. At noon, I noticed a young porcupine feeding along the shore in a little
bay that had some dead tree trunks that had drifted up against the shore. We
started taking pictures and movies of the porcupine. The porcupine moved out on
some of the logs and started browsing on some of the water plants. Then we
noticed that something was bothering his foot. He started thrashing around and
we thought he fell off the log, or that he was feeding on something in the
water. After a few minutes there was a little movement from him but something
did not look right. He did not come up for air.
“Then
we saw the large turtle head, and we started to put the pieces of what we saw
together. What we had just witnessed and recorded video of was a large snapping
turtle drowning a porcupine to eat!
“We
were recording this from about 20 to 50 feet away and being quiet so we did not
spook the porcupine. Now we know that if we had spooked him, we could possibly
have saved his life.
“Once
we guessed that he was dead, I moved in to about 2-3 feet away, and that is
when I got a good look at the turtle that was feeding on the drowned porcupine.
I could see the quills from the porcupine that were stuck into the turtles
neck, arm and hand from the struggle.”
Elaine
and Dana provided us with a 9-minute-long video of the event, proof positive of
the event occurring. Strangely, the porcupine uttered almost no sound during
its death struggle.
As
Elaine and Dana described, the snapping turtle had numerous quills stuck in its
face and feet. A porcupine’s quills are barbed like a fishhook and will work
their way deeper and deeper into an animal’s skin, eventually coming out the
other side of a leg or an arm. But what happens with quills in an animal’s
face?
Snappers
are known to pull ducklings under water and consume them, but I’ve never heard
of a snapper taking a porcupine.
For
that matter, most folks have never heard of a porcupine eating aquatic plants,
but indeed they do. Like beavers, porkies consume the inner cambium layer of
tree bark. But in the summer, if succulent green plants are available, both
beavers and porkies will readily consume living plants rather than bark.
Snappers also eat aquatic plants. In
fact, plant matter accounts for about a third of their diet. But as aggressive,
ambushing omnivores, snappers feed on just about anything that moves, including
insects, spiders, worms, fish, frogs, small turtles, snakes, birds, crayfish,
small mammals, and carrion.
Please never pick up a snapper. Lifting
a snapper with the hands is truly dangerous given that snappers can stretch
their necks back across their own carapace all the way to their hind feet to
bite. Also, their claws are large, sharp, and will lacerate you. And then
there’s the beak, which is nothing to mess with either.
So, appreciate snappers, but give them
a little distance. Though they are powerful predators, they are absolutely
remarkable beings that have been a native component of our lake and river
communities for many thousands of years.
Surveyor
Journals
Mary and I recently led a paddle trip
on Pallette Lake and Escanaba Lakes, two lakes that were part of a documented
fur trade route during the early 1800s. If a French voyageur or Native American
wanted to get from the Ojibwe village at Lac du Flambeau to the village at Lac
Vieux Desert, he would leave in his canoe from Lac du Flambeau via Flambeau Lake into Pokegama Lake, then
paddle and portage into White Sand Lake, into Ike Walton Lake, into Trout Lake,
into Pallette Lake, into Escanaba lake, into White Birch Lake, into Ballard
Lake, into Irving Lake, into Laura Lake, into Upper Buckatabon Lake, and
finally into the Wisconsin River.
What’s
interesting is to try and find the original trails between the lakes, most of
which are long gone. One way to determine where the trails once were is to
access the original surveyor records from the 1860s. When the surveyors crossed
a trail, they usually indicated in their journal exactly where that point
occurred. So, in September of 1864 for the portage between Ike Walton and Trout
Lakes, the surveyor, John McBride wrote as he walked north between Sections 15
and 16, “Trail bears E and W” at 73 chains. One chain equals 66 feet, so he was
4,818 feet from the south corner between the two sections, or 462 feet (5280’ -
4818’) from the north corner between the sections. He also noted that he
crossed the same or another trail at 74.5 chains, another 99 feet north of his
first encounter with the first trail, and that this trail “bears NW and SE.”
With
modern GPS units, one can find section corners rather easily. Then it’s just a
matter of setting the GPS to go the distance and direction you want, and
hopefully stumbling upon an ancient trail.
The BCPL surveyor notes are all
available at: http://bcpl.state.wi.us/,
then click on “Online Records.”
Sightings
7/13: Mary and I hiked a trail in Price County after a rain,
and with the intense humidity and heat of that week, the mosquitoes were absolutely
bedeviling us. However, once the trail opened up a bit, it was the deerflys’
turn. To take care of them, I placed one of my handy-dandy, very sticky
“Tred-Not” deerfly patches on my cap, and within a half hour, I’d caught 80
deerflies on my patch, a fine harvest indeed!
There’s no better way to beat the
deerflies. Many sporting stores carry the patches, but if you can’t find them,
go to: www.deerflypatches.com
7/14: We paddled Nixon Lake (southeast of Boulder Junction)
and were delighted to see a pair of trumpeter swans with three cygnets. Nixon
had been the site of nesting trumpeters a decade or more ago, and we weren’t
aware the swans were again nesting there.
7/20: Mary and I took a stroll in a bog in Presque Isle and
found dozens of grass pink (Calopogon
tuberosus) orchids still in bloom, as well as dozens of pitcher plants.
7/20: The Juneberries in our yard are coming ripe, and the
cedar waxwings are making short order of them.
7/21: We ate our first ripe blueberries while on a hike on
the Kentuck-Spectacle Lake trail, a trail that we highly recommend taking. A
black-and-white warbler chick flew right at us when I “pished” for birds on the
trail. Young-of-the-year songbirds are fed by their parents for several weeks
after fledging, so perhaps this one thought I was a source of food. Or it may
just have been curious in general, a potentially bad trait for a young bird
needing to survive.
7/21: We stopped at a site along the Luna-White Deer trail
where in the past we have seen hundreds of horned bladderworts (Utricularia cornuta) in flower, and they
were still there. Horned bladderworts are a rooted bladderwort along wet
shorelines – other bladderworts are mostly free floating in shallow water – and
like their brethren, they are carnivorous. The flowers, however, have a
wonderful smell. John Burroughs, a famous American naturalist and writer in the
late 1800s-early 1900s, believed the horned bladderwort to be the most fragrant
wildflower of all flowers he had ever encountered, a very tall compliment
indeed.
7/22: We’ve seen numerous hazelnut bushes loaded with
hazelnuts, so it appears to be a banner year for them.
Celestial
Events
We’re
down to 15 hours of daylight as of today, 7/26, and losing three minutes of
daylight every day, a depressing thought indeed to those who love thesse long
evenings of light.
The
peak Delta Aquarid meteor shower, rated at 15 to 25 meteors per hour, takes
place in the early morning and evening hours of 7/28. If you trace all the Delta Aquarid meteors
backward, they appear to radiate from in front of the constellation Aquarius
the Water Bearer, which, arcs across our southern sky.
On
8/3, look before dawn for Jupiter four degrees north of the waning crescent moon.
On 8/4, Mars nearly takes Jupiter’s place about five degrees north of the
waning crescent moon.
As
of 8/5, we’re midway between the average ice-out and ice-up dates on many of
our northern lakes.
The
new moon occurs on 8/6.
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