T-storms and turtles

About a week ago we had a pretty impressive squall line come out of Canada, across Lake Erie, and dump over an inch of rain on our farm.  The line was making its way across the lake as I was outside feeding and watering the baby chickens out on pasture.  I could feel the energy in the air even though I could not yet hear thunder or see the storm clouds.  I am always happy when the storms hold off until after I do my morning chores.  For some reason, wild turkey gobblers LOVE to gobble in stormy weather.  Across the road on the neighbor's place, I could hear a turkey gobbling almost non-stop.  He was gobbling when I stepped out the door to start my morning chores.  I could hear him while I was feeding the baby meat chicks in their outdoor pens.  And I could hear him as I was turning off the hose and finishing up chores about an hour later. 

Mike in the meantime was in a hurry.  He had prepped one section of the field for planting beans the evening before.  Not expecting the storms to be rolling through so soon after sunrise, he had anticipated a more leisurely morning before jumping on the tractor.  But the storm was moving and Mike got on the tractor as soon as it was light enough to see well.  Out to the fields he went to plant beans before the rain came.  The wind started whipping around and thunder was rumbling when I heard the tractor coming back up the lane toward the barns.  I grabbed the camera and took a few pictures of the approaching storm.  The cloud pattern was spectacularly beautiful. 

Fortunately we had no damage from the storm.  A few trees were blown down around the county, but nothing serious.  Quite the spectacular lightning show accompanied the storm as well.

As I left for work in the morning, the backside of the storm was still raining on us.  Just down the road from our driveway is a low spot in the road where a small streamlet goes under the road through a culvert.  In times of heavy rain, this low spot has been known to flood the road.  The road was not flooded this morning, but there ambling down the edge of the road was a very decent sized snapping turtle.  It was quite coincidental since just the day before I was reading an article online about how the area's female snapping turtles were on the move looking for places to lay their eggs.  Unfortunately, the storm made the lighting pretty poor and the only photo that turned out was one with a flash.  It was a cool sighting though.

Little did I know that would be the first of 3 snapper sightings in the next 4 days.  The following day, Mike was out in the garden digging up some onions when he came across this not-so-little lady hanging out right in the middle of the onion patch. 

Then 2 days later I was again on my way to work and came to a bridge over a larger creek about 1.5 miles from the farm.  There was another snapper walking across the bridge on the yellow line.  I guess the article about turtles being on the move was correct.  3 snappers in 4 days was pretty cool.