Today Vader and I were cruising through the woods, as we like to do, and we had been walking for about an hour and a half when just as we were almost back to the car all hell broke loose. One of the things Vader likes to do whenever he has the chance is to chase deer. It’s annoying. Partly because I don’t like it that he is hassling nature, partly because he could get hurt, and partly because he turns into a one-track-mind pursuit machine. Once he’s after a deer, there is pretty much nothing I can do until he tires out or loses the poor beast. Lucky for the deer, they are much faster than Vader. Normally he finds deer one at a time… today he found a clump of four. The chase was actually pretty short since I think he was already tired, but that wasn’t the end of the action.

Shortly after I got him back on track he found something else. He was just in sight way off in the trees, and he was more or less doing his play bark. At first I thought maybe he found some people, then as I got closer it seemed like maybe he was stuck somehow, or maybe had cornered a woodchuck or something. Once I got close I could sort of see what he was barking at, and it looked like a giant puffball. I thought, “If he’s barking at fungus I am gonna be pissed.” It wasn’t fungus. I could tell because fungus doesn’t fight back. It was a GIANT snapping turtle. The biggest one I had ever seen. Right there in the middle of the woods. Its tail was folded in, and it’s head was all pulled back in its shell, it was actually really cute, but Vader wouldn’t stop barking at it. I had to put him back on-leash and basically drag him away. Of course, by then we were a little lost so it took a while to get back to the car, but it all turned out ok.