A Fisherman’s Tale
It’s not every day an angler catches a creature normally found lurking in the Mississippi River, however, this is exactly what happened to a local angler fishing for carp at Earlswood Lakes, a series of lakes which feed the North Stratford upon Avon canal system that are sited a couple of miles from Oaktree Home and Garden Centre.
The angler in question thought he was about to land a huge carp when he started battling with what was to be the catch of his life, imagine his horror when the creature started to emerge from the water and resembled a crocodile. Instinctively he dropped his rod and began to retreat only to notice that the creature was in fact a turtle, not an ordinary turtle though, this was an aggressive snapping turtle, similar to the one pictured below.
Photograph courtesy Gary M. Stolz/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
Between them the angler and his friends managed to release the turtle back into the lake, it proved quite a struggle because of the aggressive nature of the creature.
Obviously it is not known how a snapping turtle first came to inhabit these lakes, suspicion must fall upon unscrupulous dealers or owners that find they cannot cope with certain wild animals and in desperation release them into the wild as a means of getting rid of them. One only has to consider the various sitings of large cat like animals on places such as Dartmoor and Exmoor which are probably the result of similar actions by owners of certain wild animals.
This particular turtle is still swimming freely in Earlswood Lakes, no doubt devouring a large amount of fish that also inhabit the lakes, as for the local anglers, I feel that somehow fishing those lakes is not going to be quite the same again, knowing what is lurking out there!