BIG Turtle! Creative God!

Sometimes God appears in my life at the most amazing times! If there were ever a time when I would have thought God would appear clearly, it was probably Sunday morning when two of my girls were singing in church. I blogged about that another day though. In reality, the coolest God moment I had that day was NOT listening to the kids sing in church...probably because Momma nerves and pride got in the way...but on the drive home!

As I am turning onto our road, right between my pond and my mom's pond I see something in the road. As you can see it isn't very clear what it is at first. Now to get to my driveway which is up near the farthest trees on the right, I am going to have to drive past this blob in the road. I get a little closer and realize that it is the snapping turtle that lives in my mom's pond!

I hope from this picture that you can tell how HUGE this turtle really is! We have often seen his/her head in the pond and always feel like it must be large but seeing how much space she takes up in a standard two lane dirt road shows how large she is!

I did get out of the van and get close enough to ZOOM in to take this picture trying to show how covered in slime and weeds she was. I had to laugh at the grass stuck to her like racing stripes!  Her feet were about the same size as my mom's cocker spaniel's feet! It was amazing. I would have to say that her shell was about the same diameter as my steering wheel in my Grand Caravan van!

As I was taking pictures and enjoying the creativity of God to have thought up a creature that just defies imagination, she decided she had enough of being observed and turned toward me! One more quick picture and I hurried back to the van! I am in awe of the beauty of the turtle and in terror of the strength of her jaws!

I did take video that I have no clue how to embed that shows her deciding she had enough of the road and getting up and walking off. She went fairly quickly and she stood at good 4 inches off the ground to the bottom of her shell. Of course, the next thing that struck me was that this turtle has been in Mom's pond for years. We have watched her and we always look for her head sticking up so she is obviously good at living, yet she was handicapped! Her left front leg was noticeably shorter than the others when she walked. She was lopsided and uneven and looked even more ungangly than turtles do anyway!

Yes, I know, people will think I am strange to see beauty in a turtle, but really I see beauty in the creativity of the Awesome Creator that can have such an imagination that He created puppies, horses, cows, bunnies, turtles, and all other varieties of animals! And he made so many of them work together to keep the world in balance! Amazing!