I am used to seeing snappers in June when they emerge from the swamp to the gravel of our driveway. Last year we had three at once digging holes and dropping eggs as I watched from the kitchen window. 

But this is August, and the crawling snapper, well over a foot long, a heap of mud on her back, catches my eye as I glance toward the meadow. I walk over to take a closer look, and she looks tired, her tail tucked up against her ragged back shell, her eyes half-closed. Perhaps she is cold on this cloudy evening, a wind making it feel more like October in this corner of northern New England. 

What has kept her buried so late into the summer? And what has prompted her to haul herself out now? 

Females can hold sperm for years, only releasing it when the time is right for producing baby turtles, an admirable form of female-controlled family planning. It’s late for egg-laying, so perhaps she is looking to re-up her sperm holding tank. I know we have at least one fine-looking male in our pond. I have seen the violent mating of these primordial beasts, claws, and jaws snapping, tails slapping, twirling, fat legs clutching at one another. Finally, a slow twirling of shell over shell in the water, peaceful, even graceful at the end. If she’s after a one-night stand, I’m sure our Lothario will welcome her in his mucky home behind the cattails.

Whatever her mission, whether it be sperm collection or nesting, I will not delay her. I back away, wish her well. It is getting dark, so I trudge back to the house where the first crickets are singing along the foundation rocks. 

Something makes me look up, and I catch the flutter of a bat. No, make that two bats, twenty feet above my head, swooping in loop-de-loops eating the last of the fireflies. I almost can’t believe it. I haven’t seen a bat in over ten years. A mysterious and terrible disease has decimated the New England population. I never expected to see bats in my summer sky, but here they are, putting on a batty show, just for me. These two have survived. Perhaps they are mates with pups to succor. Like the snapper, they are survivors.

How fitting these beasts—of the mud, of the air—should meet me at the meadow—on the pathway to the water, a blanket below the sky.