Turtle Eggs

"It's going to be a nice day," my mom said. We looked outside and noticed a vulture sitting on our lamppost. "That's weird," we thought. A little later when we went outside we realized why the vulture was there. Near the bushes at the edge of our patio, we saw a snapping turtle. We had seen the same turtle in our yard for two days. We thought it had left, but then that morning, we saw it again. It was sitting in my mom's lavender.

It looked like it was digging a hole. We all watched. After a while, it starting putting it's stomach in the hole. My dad went to get a shovel, to move the turtle out of our yard. While he was in the garage, we noticed something coming out of the turtle's belly. "He's laying eggs!" I yelled. 

My mom and dad ran to watch with us. We all say more eggs popping out. Every time the turtle laid an egg, it used it's foot to push the egg further into the hole it had made. We watched this for a long time. My mom used her phone to look up how many eggs a snapping turtle could lay. We learned that a snapping turtle could lay 40-100 eggs!

After the turtle was done, we now realized the turtle wasn't a he...but a she! She covered the eggs and started to walk back towards the edge of our yard. We learned that snapping turtles leave their eggs behind and they hatch 80-90 days later. We figured out that the eggs should hatch sometime around August...near my birthday!

My mom called an animal expert who told us to cover the eggs with a laundry basket or a recycling bin to keep them safe from predators. We did that. I even made a sign that said, "Caution! Turtle eggs here!" 

We kept an eye on the eggs all summer long. But we never saw them hatch. One day, my mom saw a hole and said, "I think the turtle eggs hatched."

I disagreed because the hole didn't look like when the turtle laid the eggs. We may never know what happened to those eggs.