Lyme
Just last week, a painted turtle — a small one, only about 8 inches wide — was crossing Route 12A out by the Lebanon landfill, where animals often travel between the Connecticut River and the forest on the other side.
The average turtle only risks the roadway twice a year — while traveling to find some nice, sandy soil for an egg-laying session, and while returning home from a newly laid cache, said Catherine Greenleaf, a licensed wildlife rehabilitator who lives in Lyme.
Greenleaf said the turtle likely was nervous, having ventured so far from the relative safety of its watery home. She said it probably was seeking out the same patch of land where it had hatched from an egg, an estimated seven years ago.
What came next happens all too often, said Greenleaf — a young man driving a white pickup truck ran the turtle over.
“The woman driving behind watched him swerve and hit the turtle intentionally,” Greenleaf said. Though no one can say for sure whether there was an audible cracking sound, it was clear that the roughly 5,000-pound truck had broken the small turtle’s shell.
As the truck disappeared down the roadway, the woman who witnessed the incident pulled to the side of 12A and got out of her car to see whether she could help the injured reptile.
In Cold Blood
When turtles and humans share the road during the turtle nesting season, which runs from late May through early July, it’s not a good mix — for either species.
“It’s been going on for years,” Lyme Police Chief Shaun O’Keefe said. “One of the problems, especially with the snappers, is we have some big ones the size of couch pillows. I’ve seen 60 pound turtles. A turtle that big will wreck your car.”
O’Keefe keeps a shovel in his truck. When he gets a call from someone about a turtle in the road, he’ll use the shovel to help the turtle cross the road.
“The big turtles, you let them bite it and help them along,” he said.
Greenleaf said she also uses a shovel to gently coax a turtle into a plastic box, which she uses to transport it safely.
Animal welfare groups, including the Turtle Rescue League, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and the Mid-Atlantic Turtle & Tortoise Society say that the most important thing to consider when helping a turtle cross the road is to get it where it’s going — not where it’s been.
“If you turn the turtle in the wrong direction, they’re just going to go back,” Greenleaf said.
If the turtle can’t cross safely alone, one can lend a helping hand by grasping it gently around the middle of its shell, and keeping it low to the ground while carrying it to a spot 30 feet from the road.
Turtles should not be picked up by the tail, as this can dislocate its spine and cause serious injury and pain to the animal. Greenleaf said attempting to drag a turtle by its tail can cause the same injuries.
She also said that warmer summers in the region in recent years (which some experts have linked to climate change) has widened the traditional turtle-crossing season.
“We had a bizarre incident on Easter Sunday when four snappers came out of the water at Post Pond and tried to cross the road,” she said. “This was just one day after ice-out.”
Automobiles pose the single biggest threat to turtle populations, according to wildlife biologists with the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department.
And while painted turtles populations are generally doing well, New Hampshire is home to two endangered turtle species — Blanding’s turtle and the Eastern box turtle — as well as the spotted turtle, a threatened species. Spotted turtles are endangered in Vermont, which also has another threatened species, the spiny softshell.
Five years ago, Greenleaf founded the Saint Francis Wild Bird Hospital in Lyme to help injured and orphaned birds, but she said it didn’t take long for her phone to begin ringing with calls from people who had found turtles crossing the road.
“I’ve taken in injured painted turtles and snapping turtles every year,” she said.
She used to name them. But she doesn’t anymore. It got to be too painful.
“They do die,” she said. “It’s pretty gruesome. It’s pretty bad.”
Not long after she began taking an interest, Greenleaf wondered whether there was a way to stop people from hitting turtles in the first place, rather than just dealing with the bloody aftermath.
That’s when she reached out to Those Guys.
Those Guys
Those Guys is a Lyme-based nonprofit made up of a loose network of dozens of civic-minded volunteers, said Kevin Rhoads, a coordinator. On any given week, you might see one of Those Guys helping to put numbers on houses so that ambulances can find them more quickly, or giving an elderly person a ride to a medical appointment, or raking leaves for a person suffering from a disability.
Greenleaf began sending out emails and posting messages on a municipal listserv about an idea she’s had to protect the turtles — a signage program that would alert drivers when they were driving through a turtle hotspot.
Two years ago, Greenleaf put up four signs herself. Last year, she made six more, and began getting calls from people who wanted to put up even more signs to mark more turtle crossings.
Rhoads said the idea of making turtle crossing signs gelled with Those Guys immediately.
“A number of people jumped up to the request” and began turning out signs — they’re mostly homemade versions of yard signs, with laminated posters affixed to stakes.
Some of Those Guys have gotten creative with the signs — the first of a pair near the Loch Lyme Lodge says “don’t drive over the turtles,” followed by a second that reads “or they will evolve spikes,” with an accompanying graphic. Others show pictures of turtles with tire treads on their backs.
“I would guess that we’re probably over three or four dozen at this point,” Rhoads said. “I know the last time I went up Route 10, I saw at least a dozen along the way, and I know 10 is not the only road where they’re going up.”
By all accounts, the signs have been successful at increasing awareness.
“Since those signs have been up I have not seen one turtle on the road,” O’Keefe said.
Greenleaf said she still sees some hurt turtles, but anecdotal evidence suggests there has been a significant decline in fatalities.
About a month ago, the signage campaign ran into a new problem.
Greenleaf called O’Keefe to notify him that several of the turtle signs had disappeared in the night.
“She asked if there was anything I could do,” O’Keefe said. “But it’s kind of a difficult theft to investigate. We don’t have much to go on.”
Those Guys have responded by churning out more signs to replace the dozen or so that have been stolen.
Education and Healing
While the community has generally responded warmly to the save-the-turtle campaign being waged by Greenleaf, O’Keefe and Those Guys, turtles still are getting injured — like the little painted turtle on Route 12A in Lebanon.
Greenleaf said that the woman who stopped to help the turtle found that it was still alive and drove it to the Stonecliff Animal Clinic on Mechanic Street, where veterinarians called Greenleaf.
Greenleaf said she takes in between six and 10 turtles a year. Their survival often depends on the type of injury they’ve sustained.
Most turtles can survive a crack in the shell’s carapace, the curved bony shell that covers its back. But sometimes, that carapace is compressed down into the plastron, the flat light-colored shell component that protects the turtle’s belly, a more serious problem that often crushes the internal organs.
“That’s almost always fatal,” Greenleaf said.
The little painted turtle’s cracked carapace gave Greenleaf hope it could make a full recovery. Sometimes, she sets the ruptured shells as if they were broken bones, using an array of metal hooks and wires that pull the shell together so that it can fuse back together.
“As long as the blood supply is there, it will heal up,” she said.
She cautioned against well-intentioned would-be turtle saviors from using epoxy or other materials to try to fill a crack or glue it together, because those substances interfere with the natural healing process. The painted turtle received a specialized “liquid bandage” that promotes, rather than inhibits, healing.
“She’s doing really well,” Greenleaf said of the little painted turtle.
Once a turtle’s shell has been set for optimal healing, she monitors its vitals and gives it the food, water and time it needs to recuperate. A larger wound in the shell of an old snapping turtle might take months, while a hairline crack in a young turtle might disappear in as few as 10 days, after which she can release them back into the wild.
She hopes that, when the little painted turtle has been released, it will benefit from increased public awareness about the need to slow down in wildlife corridors.
Greenleaf said that, while all the eggs will have been laid by mid-July, motorists still should be on guard for a different stage of the life cycle until early fall.
“In August, it’s all the hatchlings,” she said.
Those who find an injured turtle can call the New Hampshire Fish and Game Wildlife Division at 603-271-2461 to get a list of wildlife rehabilitators in their area.
Matt Hongoltz-Hetling can be reached at mhonghet@vnews.com or 603-727-3211.