After a long day of organizing photos and walking around Papa’s Pumpkin Patch with my wife and PJ, I let them take care of stuff like baths and took off to the sandbar with my camera. I wanted to see two things: what that pile of rocks under the bridge is, and what the new beam is that’s sticking out of the west end of the new bridge.

That’s when my attention was drawn to the silhouette of one of my favorite, most elusive subjects: the Great Blue Heron. This one was reasonably cooperative, although I never did get too close to him. It turned out that was just fine, as I wanted to include the railroad bridge and the river in the shot. I set up my tripod and was able to take this exposure. What’s cool about the herons is that if they perceive a possible threat, they stand still to assess the situation. I clapped my hands to make this bird freeze in his tracks, then took the shot. This bird sat still for the eight seconds needed to capture the moment! Even zoomed into the full size picture, the water is blurred but the bird is not. What a cooperative subject! In fact, if you look at the Grant Marsh bridge in the background, you’ll see streaks of lights made by cars driving over the bridge while the camera’s shutter sits open.

By the way, the piles of rocks are so they can make a platform out into the water for a track-driven crane to move. Apparently the ones on the barges just aren’t going to cut it. And the beam sticking out of the west end of the new bridge? It’s a beam. Not that it was a mystery to start with, but it’s hard to get a decent look at it while driving over the old bridge. Two questions answered, one awesome (and unexpected) photo to boot. Chalk up one more successful journey in the Bismarck-Mandan area!

After hanging out at the Huntington used book store in Mandan, my little boy and I took the long way to the downtown street fair. While turning the corner where Tavis Road meets Burleigh Avenue, I noticed a big lump of something in the road. I thought my eyes were deceiving me, but they weren’t: it was a big, angry snapping turtle, just sitting in the middle of the road!

People tend to fly through this corner well in excess of the speed limit, so my first concern was to avoid this snapper getting plastered all over the road (and sending someone’s car to the wheel alignment shop!). I had a set of leather work gloves in the truck, but there’s no way I was going to try to pick him up. His claws were nearly an inch long, and he was already ticked. I used a stick to try to prod him along, but he’d only spin and snap at me.

I spent a little while waving traffic around him, as cars were barreling down on him pretty fast until they saw some idiot in the road waving his arms. PJ fell asleep in the truck, so he missed out on the excitement.

Did I mention he was angry? I bet he had a few close calls before I showed up, because I wasn’t about to stand there taunting him. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen how fast a properly motivated turtle can move on pavement, but I have. They can actually be extremely fast! When they’ve got a beak on ’em like this guy, they’re best not teased.

Check out those claws! Like I said, even lifting him up from behind with leather gloves seemed a pretty stupid idea, because I’m pretty sure it’s impossible to grab that shell and be out of the claws’ range at the same time. I was tempted to try, but I’m trying to quit being such a frequent Emergency Room visitor.

A couple came by and grabbed a windshield ice scraper out of their trunk, the kind that’s around three feet long with a scraper on one end and a broom on the other. The guy was able to shuffleboard the turtle into the ditch, which didn’t help the snapper’s temperament any. But at least he was out of immediate danger, assuming he didn’t climb back onto the road. We pushed him into the weeds a bit further, so that he was closer to the water than the road.

Once it was all over, I told the turtle a joke and we laughed ourselves silly, as you can see from his smile. Okay, that’s not exactly it. In this picture he was tired of being prodded, so he rolled his eyelids shut and hissed at us. Figuring that were were fortunate to have everyone escape without being hit by a car, bitten, or scratched silly, the good samaritan and I went back to our respective vehicles and left the turtle to sort things out for himself.

Parting shot. Nestled securely in the weeds next to the backwater, this turtle hunkered down and waited for the pesky humans to leave. Satisfied that we’d done the right thing, leave is exactly what we did.

It seems like I can’t go anywhere without something interesting happening, and this Saturday was no different. I’m blessed to have a life where every day throws me an unusual event to write about. Thankfully I never go anywhere with my camera, so I have pictures to back it up!

I took a couple of minutes after work to stop by one of my favorite wetland patches to see if the dragonflies were doing anything. Most of them weren’t, but then I noticed this one buzzing around me. I stopped walking for a bit and he decided I looked like a better landing spot than the weeds, which were waving in the wind.

As I looked down at my shin, a lone mosquito joined him. I wasn’t worried about the skeeter, as the denim wasn’t up against my skin. What was even more curious than the futility of this mosquito’s attempt at a meal was that she didn’t even notice what the dragonfly was doing! He was finishing up his meal…a mosquito! You can see the last wing sticking out of the dragonfly’s mouth. I snapped a few photos before this one, and it’s even more obvious there.

I didn’t see many other dragonflies, the mosquitos were pretty thick, and I needed to get home for dinner. Aside from these two stowaways hitching a free ride in exchange for a photo, I didn’t really get anything else to post.