Mud Turtles

Overview

Mud turtles are the snapping turtles of the fens. They lie buried in the mud of slow water and take ducklings, fish, and anything else that comes within reach, including the hand of a fisher who reaches carelessly into an eel-trap. Reedfolk know them as old residents of the pools, and say that when a mud turtle leaves its pool, the water is about to move.

Appearance

A grown mud turtle has a shell as wide as a large platter, ridged along the top in three rows of low keels, dark brown and often green with weed and mud. Its head is large, with a hooked, beaked jaw and small eyes; its neck is long and can shoot out to half the shell's length. Its legs are thick and clawed, its tail long and saw-edged. The shell is too small to hide in, so it fights.

It moves slowly on land, lunging and snapping with a hiss if approached. In the water it rests on the bottom, looking like a stone covered in weed, and smells of mud and rot.

Habitat and Range

Mud turtles live in slow, muddy, weedy water: the fens and pools of the Reedmere in the Confluence Basins and the backwaters and oxbows of the Lower Serath. Each keeps to one pool or reach for many years.

Behaviour and Temperament

A mud turtle lies in the mud with only its eyes and nostrils showing, waiting for fish, frogs, ducklings, snakes, and carrion to come close, then strikes with its jaws. It also eats water plants. It is slow and solitary, and on land it is aggressive, because it cannot hide. The bite can take a finger off.

Life Cycle

Females leave the water in early summer to dig nests in sandy banks and lay twenty or more round eggs, which hatch in autumn. Many nests are dug up by foxes and badgers. A turtle that survives grows slowly and may live longer than a person.

Uses and Dangers

Mud turtles are eaten, in soup above all, and their shells are used as bowls and scoops in fen households. Their danger is the bite: fishers reaching into eel-traps and children wading in the fens learn to look first. They take ducklings and fish from the traps.

Lore and Belief

Reedfolk say a mud turtle that leaves its pool knows the water will move, and a household that sees one walking across a bank in a wet spring moves its boats and stores. A turtle that has lived in one pool for generations is spoken of by name. Basin Humans say a snapping turtle will not let go until it thunders, which is untrue but makes children careful.

Fen children dare one another to wade the pool of a named turtle, and the old snapper of one Reedmere pool is said to wear a thief's finger-ring grown into its shell.

Where It Appears

• Overview: Animals