A Turtle and a Trail

Here are two interesting wildlife encounters I had over Memorial Day weekend.

For starters, I've been seeing a lot of painted turtles in my yard and driveway recently. I managed to snap a picture of this little lady digging a hole to lay her eggs right at the bottom of my back steps.

 Close-up

The second is an entirely new experience to me, and just about the coolest thing I've seen all year. I was kayaking up the Winooski River when all of a sudden the river widened and became only ankle deep and very clear. I saw this crazy winding track in the sand at the bottom next to my boat. My first though was that it was possibly left by a boat that got beached before me, and dragged its tail end trying to get back to deeper waters.

It's pretty wide!

I followed it until I reached the end, and I noticed this big lump of a thing. Perhaps somebody dropped something off the boat?

No wait...

 It is what's making the trail!

 Just the largest mussel I've ever seen. And let me tell you, I've seen some mussels.

Mussels move by extending a muscular 'foot' out of the opening between their two shells and dragging themselves along after it. You can see evidence of this in the picture above. I watched it, its motion was so slow it was hard to tell it was moving but after awhile I could see its position had changed relative to its surroundings.

As I moved up the river I saw more of these paths, usually ending in a half-buried mussel or a mound indicating a fully buried one. This experience was amazing, I felt like I had an invitation to see a whole world that is usually kept secret and hidden.