Nesting female Florida Softshelled Turtle, Apalone ferox.
Jake and I were zipping along on our favorite “Canebrake Rattler road” when Jake hollered “softshell, a big one.” Translated that meant photo-op so I swerved, turned, and drove almost up to the turtle—a big female—and she was nesting. Pix were taken and we left, the turtle still undisturbed.

Two hours later, after finding a beautiful canebrake rattler, we decided to recheck the nesting Florida Softshell, Apalone ferox. She was gone. Initially, from the car, it seemed that all was well, that she had laid, covered the nest, and returned to the flooded swamps. But, deciding to take some pix of the turtle’s swampland home, I left the car, our security from the dozens of gathering deerflies, horseflies, and “skeeters,” and Jake elected to take pix of the turtle nest.

Disaster. Her primary nest and several other attempted nestings, had been pilfered.

Our initial thoughts ran to raccoons, a well known and abundant predator of turtles and their eggs. But before leaving we had changed our minds, now leaning toward human predation.

The thought change was brought about by the finding of one intact egg at the mouth of the nest and then finding 2 others, one broken and one still intact several feet away on road edge.

We picked up the 2 “good” eggs after deciding to incubate them while all the while feeling sure that after having been rolled about and dropped incubation would be unsuccessful.

But the hatching, more than 2 months later, proved me wrong. And now we have 2 healthy appearing hatchlings to return to the swamp.