Last week I was on vacation this week at my parents’ lake house in New Hampshire.

Since I was a kid, a favorite evening pastime has been to catch turtles. Around dinner time, scores of cute little painted turtles (about 6″ long) would pass by, poking their heads up out of the water ever so often. When they are close enough, we’d go after them with a net, flippers and goggles. Sometimes we’d forgo all that and just grab them with our bare hands. I remember one night where we caught 18 of them. We’d collect them and let them free all at once, betting which one would reach the water first.

One night last week we were cooling off in the early evening in the lake when a turtle popped up about a foot from me. I was almost able to justreach over and catch him, but he took off. I dove down and pinced his shell carefully in my hand, said hello for a minute and let him go.

The next night I saw a few turtles just swimming along and almost grabbed two of them without any equipment. I couldn’t see them clearly and didn’t want to get bit, so I backed off and got some goggles at least.

I waited in the water for a while for some to come close enough for me to pounce. None popped up nearby. I was about to give up when I looked down and saw a turtle in the water right next to me. He was a foot away on my right, near the bottom of the chest-high water. For a second I considered going to grab him – then I realized this was no painted turtle. This a was a 2 foot long snapper. You don’t want to mess with these guys – they’ll take a finger right off. Instead, I yelled and ran as fast as I could through water to the shore. He apparently was sending me a message to stop harassing his folk.

Therefore today’s lesson is: don’t pick on animals, even little cute ones, lest their bigger brothers come over and scare the bejeesus out of you.