Two hundred million years of evolutionary success is difficult to call into question. But when our local snapping turtle made his fourth annual appearance in our gravel driveway, far from what I thought was any logical water source, we began to wonder if perhaps one creature had missed the Darwinian boat.

Actually, turtles are one of Mother Nature's great success stories, turning up in the fossil record late in the Triassic Period and surviving giant dinosaurs, cosmic collisions, floods, and ice ages by remaining pretty much unchanged down through the ages.Worldwide, there are more than 270 species of turtles, the snapping turtle (Chelydra serpentina) being among the largest in North America and certainly the largest in Maine. And although snappers are generally bigger and more populous in states to our south and west, sizable mossbacks do turn up throughout the southern half of Maine, with Millinocket being their approximate extreme northern range.

"The late spring is usually when snappers are on the move," says Henry Hilton, a retired state biologist. "In fact, I can almost count on getting a call or two about them on June twelfth. They're very regular and pretty predictable in their habits. That's why they've been so successful for so long."

But for all their evolutionary success, Maine snapping turtles haven't been doing so well recently. In fact, the attributes that worked for them for millennia now seem to be sabotaging these reptiles, nearly placing their very survival in jeopardy. Fortunately, they are not without their champions in Maine.

"The only thing they haven't been able to adapt to is highway traffic," says independent researcher and turtle advocate Susanne Kynast, who became fascinated with turtles as an undergraduate at the University of Maine at Machias. Studying genetics and aging led Kynast to snappers, which generally live to be fifty to a hundred years old. "Essentially, they don't age," says Kynast. "We don't know why yet. That's why they are so important to study and to keep them from being wiped out."

Kynast has found that highway deaths are not the only reason the turtle population in Maine is declining. There are markets for snapping-turtle meat in the United States, where it frequently turns up in big-city gourmet restaurants as something called Philadelphia Snapper Soup. There is also a burgeoning market for live snappers in Japan and China, where the meat is considered a source of longevity and virility — and where native turtles have been hunted almost to extinction. Precise records of Maine's annual harvest haven't been kept, but in theory the fifteen or so licensees were allowed to take an unlimited number of snappers. And if you add the natural predators of turtle eggs (raccoons) and killers of baby snappers (herons, seagulls, and fishers), it's easy to see why snappers seem a little hard-pressed as a species.

Even without records of the annual snapper harvest in the state, Kynast's examination of the existing studies of Maine snapping turtle populations revealed an alarming trend: if trapping were allowed to continue, snappers would soon be wiped out. "They just don't reproduce fast enough to keep up," she explains, noting that just one snapper egg in 1,500 survives.

Eating these turtles is also a risky proposition. "They live so long that toxins easily accumulate in their bodies, and things like PCBs can be up to one percent of their body weight," explains Kynast. (PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, are noted for causing cancer and birth defects in humans. PCBs have been found in numerous Maine rivers, lakes, and ponds.) Armed with data and supported by state environmental organizations, Kynast went to both the legislature and the Department of Inland Fisheries & Wildlife to plead for a ban on the commercial trapping of snappers. Hearings were conducted, fact-finding missions were carried out. Finally, in the summer of 2002, IF&W's commissioner decided that no more commercial licenses for trapping snappers would be issued. Problem animals — and mine certainly qualifies — can still be dealt with on a case-by-case basis.

The snapper in our driveway was big by Maine standards, measuring about sixteen inches from the edge of his saw-toothed shell to the tip of his alligator-like tail. As with his previous late-summer visits, he was in no hurry to get to wherever he was headed, pausing in a sunny spot just long enough to catch the attention of Maggie, our brave mixed-breed dog who believes she must protect us from all intruders (except, perhaps, the UPS driver and anyone else bearing dog biscuits). In any case, her nonstop barking alerted me to an incursion in the driveway. When I arrived, I found Maggie and Mr. Quick Jaws nosing at each other like fencing professionals in a life or death duel — or so it seemed to me at the time.

"He wasn't trying to bite her, really," Kynast says. "Snappers don't want to latch on to something that could drag them off or toss them and hurt them in some way. They will almost always use that defensive behavior, the darting of the head at an adversary, with their mouths closed. They just want to scare off an aggressor."

When Kynast travels around the state, offering snapper lectures and demonstrations to schools — and essentially anyone else willing to listen — she usually brings two modestly sized snappers with her, often holding one on her shoulder like a mother burping an infant. During her demonstrations, a second snapper will often wander around among wary children and adults, exhibiting no aggressive behavior whatsoever. "Once they decide you don't mean them any harm, they're really quite docile," she says.

So why did this turtle keep making a pilgrimage to my yard?

The annual June parade of snapping turtles is generally a female affair. Warm, gravelly soil is a mother snapper's ideal place to dig a nest, lay her eggs, and then hightail it back to the swamp, pond, or riverbank. Unfortunately, most of Maine's rural roads are built on beds of loose gravel, particularly along the shoulder of the road. Hilton and Kynast say snappers often deposit their eggs near gravelly roads, risking death by high-speed wheels. Snappers are also attracted to new housing subdivisions, again because loose gravel is often brought in before foundations are poured, and the treeless areas opened up for house construction usually help that gravel to warm up considerably. Needless to say, new homeowners are unhappy when the snapper returns in subsequent years, looking for that same nesting site.

An August walkabout, however, is a bit unusual. Kynast says that my turtle was likely a male, mainly because of his size and his solo sashay at an odd time of the year. "He may have been starting early for his hibernation," she suggests. Or he might have been on a quest for food if his bog home had dried up. Although legends about snappers are replete with their alleged consumption of ducklings, hatchling trout, toes of swimming children, and the like, the truth is that their diet is largely composed of marsh grass shoots, insects, errant pollywogs, and carrion. So Mr. Quick Jaws' westward hikes across our driveway toward the brackish water of the Kennebec River may have been simple efforts to have a few more decent meals before hibernation.

But hibernation in August? In Maine, snapping turtles generally hibernate from roughly mid-September through April and sometimes into mid-May. Since they are very temperature-sensitive, they will hibernate earlier and awaken later if conditions are too cool, with sixty-one degrees the general cutoff point.

Still, I didn't know any of this when Maggie confronted our snapper. But I remembered that most snappers live in freshwater ponds, so I decided to prod our snapper into a plastic garbage can and drive him to Nequasset Lake in nearby Woolwich. But our shuffling friend would have none of this. When I tried to scoop him up on a snow shovel, he suddenly became fairly fleet of foot and headed for the woods. Moreover, when he arrived at the edge of a pine grove, he quickly dug into the duff, almost completely disappearing from view. Switching to a spade shovel, we dug him out, got him into the garbage can, and loaded him into the back of the truck.

"I hope there isn't a road between you and that lake," Kynast says when she hears my story. "He'll probably try to get back to wherever he was living," she adds, noting that snappers' sense of direction is guided by some sort of magnetic sensor in their brains. Unfortunately, they usually take a direct route to their destination, roads notwithstanding. Highway-injured snappers make up the majority of Kynast's rescued turtles, most of which she takes to Tufts University in Boston for treatment.

Unwittingly, though, I took our snapper to just the right place. Between my house and the south end of Nequasset Lake there is nothing but a mile or two of salt marshes and the swiftly running Sasanoa River.

"He'll probably be back," Kynast says with a smile. She explains that snappers have been known to travel up to twelve miles to get back to the habitat they've known so well.

Personally, though, I can't imagine why Mr. Quick Jaws would give up the idylls of Nequasset marshes and waters for another trip through our pine forest and cedar bog. But if he does show up in the driveway again, I'll take the dog and cats inside, tip my hat to him, and be assured he does indeed know exactly what he's doing — as does the state of Maine in protecting him.

In addition to rescuing injured turtles, Susanne Kynast is available for demonstration lectures about turtles to schools, summer camps, and other interested organizations. To contact her, phone 207-255-6120. To view Susanne Kynast's work on snapping turtles, visit www.tortoisetrust.org/articles/snappers.htm