Dealing With Tiny Wild Turtle Encounters And Kids

Dear Sarah of last May. You're currently standing on the muddy shoulder of the Wissahickon creek trail, balancing a tepid Yeti mug of dark roast on your yoga pants-clad knee, utterly paralyzed. Leo is pointing a grubby four-year-old finger at a creature the size of a silver dollar that looks like it crawled straight out of the Jurassic period. It's hissing. Literally hissing. At my child.

You’re about to make a series of questionable decisions regarding this little angry hatchling snapper, and I'm writing this to you from the future to say: for the love of god, put down the coffee and grab your kid’s hands.

Because, like, we don’t really get trained for this stuff, do we? You read the baby books about sleep regressions and pureed peas, but nobody hands you a manual in the hospital that says, "Hey, by the way, in four years your son will try to befriend a highly aggressive, spiky-tailed infant snapping reptile on a Tuesday morning."

Anyway, the point is, I survived the great trail encounter of last spring, and if you're currently staring at a tiny, prehistoric-looking puddle monster while your child asks if it can sleep in their bed, we need to talk.

That time we stopped bike traffic for a creature the size of a Ritz cracker

So there we were. Me, Leo, Dave (who was uselessly checking his fantasy baseball stats), and my sister who had come along pushing her six-month-old baby in the stroller. It was one of those weirdly crisp spring mornings where you don’t know if you should wear a parka or a tank top.

Leo was wearing his Baby Sweater Organic Cotton Turtleneck Long Sleeve in the pale turquoise color. I'm fully obsessed with this sweater, by the way. I bought it a size up so he’s been wearing it since he was three, and it has miraculously survived two different juice box explosions and a very aggressive run-in with a blackberry bush. It’s my absolute favorite thing in his closet because the neck is loose enough that he doesn't scream when I pull it over his giant head, and the organic cotton actually breathes so he wasn't sweating like a maniac when the sun finally came out. Plus, it looks so ridiculously cute.

So Leo, in his pristine turquoise sweater, suddenly drops to his knees in the middle of the gravel bike path.

"MOM. DINOSAUR."

I look down, and there it's. A tiny, mud-covered hatchling. Its shell was jagged, its tail was bizarrely long—like, way longer than its actual body—and it had these tiny little jaws that were snapping at the air. Dave immediately saunters over and goes, "Oh cool, a little snapper. Let's move it."

And then my sister’s baby chucked her Panda Teether Silicone Baby Bamboo Chew Toy out of the stroller, and it landed smack in the mud about two inches from the hissing mini-Godzilla. Honestly, that teether is just okay. Like, Maya had something similar years ago and loved it, and this one is super cute in theory, but the textured bamboo detail part is an absolute nightmare to get trail dirt out of. I spent like ten minutes dousing it with my water bottle trying to scrub gravel out of the little panda ears while Dave and Leo orchestrated a wildlife rescue. Ugh. It's fine for indoors, but outdoors? No.

Anyway, Dave reaches down to grab the little guy by its long, spikey tail, and I swear to you, a guy on a Trek bicycle nearly crashed into a tree screaming at us to stop.

Apparently—and I'm so glad Bike Guy yelled at us—you can severely mess up their spines if you lift them by the tail. I mean, it makes sense when you think about it, but Dave was just operating on 1990s boy-logic. You’re supposed to do this weird sandwich-pinch thing where you put your pointer finger under their belly between the back legs and your thumb on the top back part of the shell, keeping your fingers as far away from that stretchy little accordion neck as humanly possible, because they can reach way further back than you think and they'll bite the crap out of you.

So instead of panicking, picking it up the wrong way, running it to the nearest body of water, and potentially drowning a land-bound creature who was just trying to cross the trail, you basically just have to pinch it like a hamburger and place it on the side of the road it was pointing toward. One fluid, terrifying motion. Done.

Why Dave is absolutely not allowed to make terrarium plans

Of course, the immediate next phase of this nightmare was Leo bursting into violent, world-ending tears because he wanted to take "Spike" home. And Dave, bless his heart, Dave actually looked at me and said, "I mean, we could get a tank."

I almost pushed him into the creek.

I was so panicked that I actually texted a blurry photo of this little swamp demon to my doctor, Dr. Aris, who's probably so tired of my frantic messages. I was like, Hey so Leo touched the mud near this thing and Dave wants to put it in our guest room, thoughts?

Dr. Aris called me. He didn't even text back, he just called. He said absolutely under no circumstances should we bring that thing into a house with young children, mostly because turtles are basically walking petri dishes for Salmonella.

I guess I sort of knew that? Like in the back of my mind? But Dr. Aris explained that kids under five have these completely useless, developing immune systems, and they constantly have their hands in their mouths, so having a wild reptile in the house is essentially like letting your kid play with raw chicken. He said the CDC strongly advises against it. I literally grabbed the hand sanitizer out of my bag and practically bathed Leo's hands in it right there on the trail.

If you're out hiking and your kid happens to honestly touch one of these little wild snappers, you just have to scrub their hands with actual soap and warm water the absolute second you get to a sink, and maybe don't let them eat their trail mix with their bare hands in the meantime.

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The hundred year commitment I didn't sign up for

Even if they weren't covered in bacteria, keeping one of these things is pure madness. I went down a massive internet rabbit hole that night while drinking my third glass of wine, and I read somewhere that these creatures can live to be, like, 100 years old. Or 50. Or 80. The science seemed a little fuzzy on exact numbers depending on the specific type, but my imperfect understanding is that they outlive basically everything.

Imagine explaining to your thirty-year-old son that he has to take his childhood turtle to his tiny studio apartment because you're downsizing to a condo. No thank you.

Plus, they don't stay the size of a Ritz cracker. They grow into these thirty-five-pound bulldozers that require custom outdoor ponds with industrial-grade filtration systems because they're apparently incredibly messy. And they're solitary. They hate being looked at, they hate being touched, and they'll never love you back. It’s not a golden retriever. It’s a rock with a bad attitude that lives forever.

So, past Sarah, if you're reading this: Stand your ground. Let Dave pout about the terrarium. Let Leo cry about Spike. You're saving yourself decades of hauling murky, foul-smelling tank water through your living room.

How we seriously handle nature walks now

Ever since the Wissahickon incident, I've entirely changed how we do our nature walks. I realized that if Leo is going to be obsessed with the swampy parts of the park, I need to equip him properly so he isn't tempted to use his hands.

I bought him these cheap little binoculars and a plastic magnifying glass. Now, when we see something weird and scaly in the mud, I yell "Observation Mode!" and he pulls out his binoculars. We look. We don't touch. We talk about where the animal is going, what it might eat for breakfast, and why its mom is probably waiting for it somewhere in the reeds.

And honestly, it works. Kids just want to engage with the world. If you give them a tool to look closer, they don't feel the desperate need to grab it and shove it in their pockets.

Mostly.

We did have an incident with a dead cicada last week, but that's a whole different story and honestly, my therapist says I'm making great progress on my bug phobia.

Just remember that nature belongs in nature. Even the tiny, cute, highly aggressive dinosaur-looking things. Let them cross the bike path. Give them a wide berth. And always bring extra coffee, because dealing with your child's emotional breakdown over not getting a pet swamp monster is exhausting work.

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The messy questions you probably have right now

What the hell do I do if my kid already picked it up?
First of all, breathe. Don't scream because you might startle the kid and they'll drop the poor thing on the concrete. Just calmly tell them to put it down gently, facing the direction it was going. Then immediately break out the heavy-duty wipes or sanitizer, and the absolute second you find a bathroom, scrub their hands with soap and hot water like they just performed surgery. Don't let them put their fingers near their mouth or eyes until you do.

Will a tiny one really bite my kid?
Oh, absolutely. They might look small and kind of pathetic, but they're literally ambush predators. They have these weirdly long, flexible necks that can whip around sideways and backward, and their jaws are incredibly sharp even when they're babies. It won't bite a finger off at that size, but it'll hurt like hell and traumatize everyone involved.

Should I put it in the nearest pond so it doesn't dry out?
Okay, so I thought this too, but apparently NO. A lot of the time they're hatching on land and making their own instinctual way to whatever specific water source they need, or they're a species that isn't supposed to be in deep water right away. If you chuck them into a random duck pond, they might drown or get eaten by a largemouth bass. Just put them safely across the pavement in the exact direction their little nose was pointing.

But it's so small, couldn't we just keep it in a plastic tub for a few weeks?
Please listen to me. No. Aside from the massive bacteria risk I ranted about earlier, taking them out of the wild really messes with their survival instincts. They need specific temperatures, specific UV lighting to keep their shells from getting weird and soft, and a very specific diet. Plus, it's genuinely illegal to take native wildlife out of their habitat in a lot of states. Just take a picture and walk away.