Roadblock on the Biketrail

On my way back from crashing the weekly man-bowling session at Parkway Lanes, I ran into a surprise friend on the trail. I had ridden my bike from home to the alley and so was trying to speed back home from the alley in order to pick up Jared in the Jetta, who was currently on the Vespa, and drop him off downtown so that he could catch his carpool and make it to rehearsal in Omaha on time. It was a bit nutty.

As I was speeding down Van Down on the bike trail (by the by, the bike trails in this town are to die for) when I saw the little guy. Newly hatched out and mistakenly headed away from the lake. I had to show Jared!

I called Jared and told him he had to come see. My phone froze. Jared took a wrong turn. It started raining. I waited for a while in the middle of the trail in order to protect the little guy from passing bicyclists and since I was a bit afraid to pick him up in case he had already learned to snap, as snappers are apt to do. I finally did pick him up and he played dead for about 30 seconds before he took off on a marathon through my treadmilling hands.

Jared did finally find us and we tucked our small charge into the Vespa's cargohold for the trip to the lake. I huffed up and over the hill and Jared buzzed around. We met in the parking lot. When we popped open the back, it took us a while to locate the little snapper, since he had burrowed down into Jared's Starbucks aprons. He finally came popping out and we took him down to the grass near the shore.

Jared was late and I got rained on. But I also got to have a teeny snapper nose burrow into my palm and feel his spiny little legs climb my fingers. Totally worth it. 

Snappers on byways seems to be a trend here. Early this summer I had to creep my car around a giant snapper attempting to cross Pioneers, that big guy had two kind motorists directing traffic around him who wisely chose to forgo the option of letting him bury his nose in their palms.