Rattlesnake Afterstory, Part One
So after a late night camping up on Rattlesnake Saturday night we all get up around 9am Sunday and it's pouring rain. Much bitching and whining from everyone in the group with two last names ensues. But we soak through quickly, whatever, it's not cold. We get packed up and head down off the mountain.
Driving back to 93S to get brunch at the Tilt'n Diner, I almost swerve off the road just before getting to Ashland because in the middle of it is a massive, mean-looking bastard of a snapping turtle.
Thing was easily six feet across (okay, maybe a 14 inches), and not moving despite us and all the other cars speeding by it. I pull over and we approach it. Eric, Isaac and Erin are absolutely terrified and stay in their car.
Imagine this guy but without the cute Lithuanian chick holding him. Sitting in the middle of the road. And much bigger. With a lot more rain:

So we try to get the thing to move back toward the nearby lake located at the bottom of the hill by the road. The turtle wants none of it. It tries to take Dave's toes off. I tried to be brave but after seeing a similar turtle cut a two-inch stick in half that my brother was poking it with out on Block Island years ago, I stay far away from him, kinda wishing I was in the car with the other guys.
Finally the Ashland police show up. The cop -- who Dave later points out looks suspiciously like Rod Farva -- gets out and goes "Got a turtle problem, huh?" First and last thing he says to us.
Say "Car Ramrod"! Say it!
The cop rummages around in his car's trunk. We're hoping he's going to pull out some sweet SWAT-caliber Anti-Turtle Gear but he comes up empty. He goes into his passenger seat. Nothing. Finally he walks over to the turtle and after some initial prodding with his cop-boot, finally kicks the reptilian f#%@er off the road and down the hill back toward the pond.
We get back in the car and head on to breakfast and back to Boston. I thought that was all.
Tilt'n Diner. No clue who this chick is.
Rattlesnake Afterstory, Part Two
So on Tuesday Jeremi Karnell, my company's CEO, walks past my desk and sees I have Isaac's photo of Rattlesnake open. He'd been up there once before with us on a fateful night in 2006 and had since then bought a condo in Plymouth, NH not too far away. Jeremi stops and asks if we'd been up there recently. I tell him we hiked up there Saturday and came back down Sunday AM. He says no f#%&ing way.
Turns out he had taken my former boss Rob Rex and Rob's fiancee up to Rattlesnake for a day hike on Sunday. They had arrived at the base of the same trail in the middle of nowhere in New Hampshire just two hours after we left. And that's not all.
Yesterday we're getting ready for round two in a big pitch OTO is putting together, Jeremi brings up Rattlesnake again, but this time says "Oh! I forgot to tell you the turtle story!"
It seems that while driving through Ashland to Rattlesnake, just two hours later at the same spot just outside of Ashland, Jeremi almost hit the SAME f#%%ing turtle.
Apparently Jeremi pulled over with Rob and Jen, they got out and tried also to get the turtle off the road. Clearly less of a pussy than me or the Australians, and definitely less of a pussy than Dan, Jeremi actually tried to pick the turtle up but dropped it on its back when it tried to bite him.
He wasn't this big. But almost.
While trying to figure out what to do with the struggling turtle, Jeremi says a redneck in a pickup then pulled over, got out, said "Naw, that ain't how you deal with those guys. You gotta take 'em by the tail!" And then proceded to pick the thing up by the tail. At which point it apparently relaxed and hung there, motionless, finally conceding defeat.
The redneck then got a good discuss-spin going and flung the turtle by its tail over the guard rail and back down into the pond.
I'll never know whether that turtle was just stupid as all hell or was trying to commit some kind of my-life-sucks-lets-end-it turtle-suicide, but goddamn if the little bastard didn't just have himself a shit day.
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