Thanks for taking my call. I've lived in Churubusco my whole life, I've been fishing since I was six years old, and what I saw in Fulk Lake that day in July of '48 was no ordinary turtle. Me and my buddy Orville, we'd been going out to that lake for years. It's about seven acres, sits just off Madden Road, maybe two miles outside town. Mr. Harris owned the property then, Gale Harris, good man, let folks fish there if they asked. We always asked. That morning was perfect for it, clear sky, not too hot yet. Must've been around nine in the morning when we got our lines in the water. We were after bluegill mostly, maybe some bass if we got lucky. Just sitting there in the boat, talking about nothing in particular. I remember Orville was going on about some tractor part he needed to order. Normal stuff, you know what I mean?
Then I heard it. This splash,[ but not like a fish jumping. Heavier. I looked over, maybe twenty feet from our boat, and there it was. The shell broke the surface first. Green, covered in algae and mud, but I could see it clear as day. It was massive. I'm not exaggerating when I say it was the size of a dining room table. Maybe five feet across, could've been six. The thing had these ridges running along the shell, three rows of them, all spiked up like something out of prehistoric times. Then the head came up. Lord, that head. Big as a child's head, I swear it. Maybe bigger. The beak on it was sharp, you could see that even from where we were sitting. Dark eyes, just staring at nothing. Or staring at us, I couldn't tell which. The neck was thick, had to be four, five inches around. Like a stovepipe. Orville grabbed my arm. I remember that. His hand was shaking. We both just sat there, frozen, watching this thing glide across the water. It moved slow, real slow, but you could tell it was strong. The water rippled out from it in these big waves that rocked our boat.
I've seen snapping turtles before. Caught plenty of them over the years. A big one might be, what, thirty pounds? Forty if you're lucky? This thing, I'd estimate it at five hundred pounds easy. Maybe more. When it moved, you could see the bulk of it just under the surface, this dark shadow that seemed to go on forever. It surfaced for maybe twenty seconds, half a minute tops. Then it dove. Didn't make much noise going down, just slipped under and was gone. that size are incredible - Marcus' But the water kept churning for a while after, like something big was moving around down there in the mud. Orville looked at me and I looked at him. Neither of us said anything for a good minute. Then he goes, 'You saw that, right?' And I said, 'Yeah. Yeah, I saw it.' We pulled up our lines right then and there. Rowed back to shore as fast as we could. My hands were still shaking when we tied up the boat.
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