Metuchen Edison History Features

Recollections of

Boyhood Days

In Old Metuchen

By

David Trumbull Marshall

Published by The Case Publishing Co., Flushing NY 1930

(Second Edition)- (c) 1930

Turtles.

My acquaintance with turtles is limited to the Snapping Turtle, the Box Turtle, the Eastern Painted Turtle, the Wood Turtle, and some several kinds of water turtles, the names of which I do not know.

The snapping turtle is a horrible creature, both as to looks and disposition.

We used occasionally to catch one while fishing for catfish in the muddy brooks in the Dismal Swamp at Metuchen.

To haul one of those heavy, ugly turtles out of the water when one is expecting nothing larger than an eight-inch catfish is rather terrifying. I have never seen one which weighed over twenty- five pounds, though the books say they sometimes weigh forty pounds.

A snapping turtle has very sharp jaws and can strike with his ugly head so quickly that it is difficult to follow him.

We caught one once in Dismal Swamp that must have weighed all of fifteen pounds.

We carried it the whole way home, about a mile, his jaws simply fixed to the middle of a long stick.

A snapping turtle of that size may well bite off one's finger.

My brother caught one once and cooked it. This turtle had several eggs inside of it.

The mother turtle sometimes lays two dozen eggs at a time.

One day I saw something bobbing up and down in a furrow, newly ploughed.

I went to investigate and there was a big snapping turtle probably migrating from one pond to another or possibly looking for a place to lay eggs. The eggs are always laid in the earth. The turtle ordinarily stays in the water.

I put this big turtle in the wagon and took it to John Johnson, a colored man who came from the South. He put it in the swill barrel and after about two weeks cooked and ate it.

These turtles are always for sale in the markets.

The common box turtle is familiar to most country boys.

These turtles live on dry land. They are about five inches long. They live in fields and gardens. They eat strawberries and other berries. When there are no berries they eat insects and grubs.

The curious thing about box turtles is their ability to close up their shells completely so that it is difficult to get so much as a knife blade between the carapace or upper shell, and the plastron or lower shell.

We boys used to get these turtles and carve our initials on the lower side with the date and then let them go.

I have frequently found these turtles with dates carved on them. I heard of one that had the name "Adam .... year one" carved on the shell. It probably was a fake.

Last summer I had two box turtles in a cage in the back yard. When the weather got cold I put these turtles in my very warm cellar. The next time I found them they were both dead and all dried up.

I gave them a coat of varnish and now have them in a case along with about a thousand other specimens of one kind and another.

I also have a shell of an Eastern Painted turtle, a kind of water turtle which has a bright red border around the under and visible part of the upper shell.

This turtle must have been run over by some wagon, for it has a big dent in its upper shell. It died not long after I got it.

I left it in the garden until the worms and ants had eaten all the flesh.

I then dried it over the furnace and gave it a bath in varnish. It now foregathers with the other specimens.

Wood turtles must be scarce around Long Island for I never saw but one.

This turtle has crawled about the first floor of my house in Hollis for several years.

It will come when called, or at any rate when it is time to be fed.

It has the merit of being quiet, which is more than can be said of some pets.

If you take a turtle's heart and place it in some salt water, or some serum from the turtle, it will keep on beating for days. Moreover, if you cut the turtle's heart into a thousand pieces, each piece will beat so long as it is supplied with fresh serum.

I tried that once. Our large dog caught a box turtle and gnawed so much off the shell of it that the heart was visible, still beating.

This was in the morning. We boys went into the woods and in the afternoon when we came back the turtle's heart was still beating. I took the turtle home and the heart continued to beat for some time. That was fifty years ago. The heart stopped beating some time ago.

I knew a man who lived in a flat in One Hundred and Ninth Street, New York, who had a box turtle which had crawled about the floor in his flat for several years.

I had one once when I lived in a flat in New York.

I stubbed my bare toes on it so often that I finally had to get rid of it.