Joyfully Jensen: snapping turtle and cold water

Since the weather was nice last weekend you may have guessed that the Jensens went camping, this time at the Illinois River Ranch. Since we had 5+ inches of rain here last week the river was way up again. All the creeks were flowing and it was going over the road in a couple areas which were right by our camp.

Kiera, Berkley and I were playing in the water when something went tumbling by my feet. It looked kind of like a leaf until I picked it up. Meanwhile over at our campsite my father in law makes the comment to Jimmy "Oh she found something". He said this because I am squealing something in a high pitched voice which was "Oh my gosh its a TURTLE!!!" Kiera had to check it out by knocking on its shell, checking out the loooong tail, and then she kissed it.

I carry this little baby turtle over for everyone to see and Jimmy asks me in an astonished voice "Do you know what KIND of turtle that is?" "Um yeah, it's a snapping turtle". Psh, duh. I know the differences between turtles. He was afraid I would want to bring it home. Uh, no. If I bring it home it would either die (not likely since it was a baby and had not become accustomed to is surroundings yet) or it would out live me and possibly Kiera, then who would become it's parents? Sidenote about turtles, you should never try to relocate an adult turtle to a different home because they.will.die. This little turtle was about to go tumbling down a waterfall when he was being swept by my feet so we just relocated him to a less turbulent area.

We continued to play in the water which was freezing cold. It took about 5 minutes for your legs numb up before you could semi enjoy yourself. Unless you are 4 or a hairy puppy dog then you really don't notice. Kiera even tried to go swimming off to the right of the pictures where there was deeper water. She asked if I would go swimming with her. I laughed at her.