Althouse: "Well now whoever came up with this idea isn’t any better than the teacher"/"A ridiculous reaction. Why punish the turtle?"/"I guess I don’t understand why they had to kill the turtle."

March 18, 2018

"Well now whoever came up with this idea isn’t any better than the teacher"/"A ridiculous reaction. Why punish the turtle?"/"I guess I don’t understand why they had to kill the turtle."

After a teacher (allegedly) feeds a sick puppy to a snapping turtle in an Idaho classroom, in front of the students, officials kill the turtle.

57 comments:

Chuck said...: I have many questions but I'll ask just one: will the teacher's union defend him?; 3/18/18, 2:23 PM
Sal said...: It seems the turtle was killed because it was an invasive, not because it was guilty of eating a cute little puppy. Fake news.; 3/18/18, 2:25 PM
Gahrie said...: It seems the turtle was killed because it was an invasive, not because it was guilty of eating a cute little puppy.

This is supposed to make it OK?

You put the turtle in a zoo or an animal sanctuary...not execute it.; 3/18/18, 2:28 PM
WK said...: They had to kill the turtle because it did not have a valid tiurtle permit. If it were to get loose and reproduce - you could eventually end up with turtles all the way down.; 3/18/18, 2:28 PM
Gahrie said...: By the way...how is feeding this turtle a live puppy morally worse than those who feed their snakes and reptiles live rats and mice every day?; 3/18/18, 2:29 PM
tcrosse said...: Pretty heavy penalty for eating dog meat. Hear that, Barack ?; 3/18/18, 2:35 PM
Fabi said...: Turtle Lives Matter; 3/18/18, 2:37 PM
Granny said...: Smacks of Leviticus. In addition to hanging the perp, hang the beast too. Makes sense, no?; 3/18/18, 2:40 PM
Fabi said...: From the article: "Some were shell-shocked that the turtle would be made to pay, in their view, for simply being hungry."

Who says there's no humor in journalism.; 3/18/18, 2:40 PM
Darrell said...: Obama ate a puppy. Several, in fact. Should he be worried?; 3/18/18, 2:48 PM
Paco Wové said...: The bullshit is particularly thick on this story. I see that PETA has gotten involved, never a good sign.; 3/18/18, 2:51 PM
Fernandinande said...: The Idaho Department of Dead Animals said the turtle was put down for being doomed.

"Snapping turtles are highly-adaptable, top tier predators in their habitat, like a school. That's our rightful place and we won't give it up without a fight," said the turtle disinvader, "so it was doomed."; 3/18/18, 2:53 PM
Fernandinande said...: The Idaho Department of Dead Animals said they fed the turtle to some puppies.; 3/18/18, 2:55 PM
Fernandinande said...: The Idaho Department of Dead Animals said the turtle had been weaponized and had been manipulating people.; 3/18/18, 2:57 PM
Fernandinande said...: The Idaho Department of Dead Animals said those puppies are an invasive subspecies and also now they're cannibals, so they're doomed.; 3/18/18, 2:59 PM
Mountain Maven said...: After dealing with school teachers and administrators for 50 years, I know the ideas are greater than the teachers. Teachers have no idea. Administratorz even less.; 3/18/18, 3:06 PM
David said...: It's a sequence. Now it's time to kill the officials who killed the turtle.; 3/18/18, 3:08 PM
Francisco D said...: "The department, which enforces provisions of the Invasive Species Act, said the doomed turtle was put down for being a non-native species that required a permit."

There was no permit for the turtle?

Bureaucrats with the power of life and death - that scares me as much as the corrupt FBI leadership.; 3/18/18, 3:11 PM
Darrell said...: The Idaho Department of Dead Animals is investigating the turtle for Russian ties.; 3/18/18, 3:16 PM
Unknown said...: The turtle wasn't being punished, it was being disposed of. The state is protecting the local environment from an invasive species, not making a moral judgement on the turtle's action. Why should the state be required to place the thing in a zoo?; 3/18/18, 3:17 PM
Darrell said...: The turtle was undocumented. Turtles can be illegals, it seems.; 3/18/18, 3:29 PM
Fabi said...: "Invasive" sounds rather like a moral judgmental.; 3/18/18, 3:30 PM
Fabi said...: I thought diversity was our greatest strength?; 3/18/18, 3:32 PM
Darrell said...: "Invasive" sounds rather like a moral judgmental.

No borders, no papers!; 3/18/18, 3:32 PM
Etienne said...: The theory is, that once the turtle got a taste of puppy, then he was going to want more and bigger puppies.

It works the same way with narcotics and humans. You can't fix a broken brain.

Alas, euthanasia of humans is still deprecated.; 3/18/18, 3:34 PM
Darrell said...: If turtles can live on a head of lettuce, why do they need a live puppy to eat? Is that just something Left-leaning teachers want to see?; 3/18/18, 3:36 PM
Darrell said...: His last words--"Geez, I just had a taste for pupparoni! Kill me, why don't you!"; 3/18/18, 3:38 PM
Big Mike said...: Back in the day I would have called that teacher “one, sick, puppy dog.” Except that I see what they do with sick puppy dogs in his school district.; 3/18/18, 3:46 PM
Paco Wové said...: Three boys were in the classroom, helping Crosland feed his animals after school had ended.

The puppy was dying. Crosland couldn’t get the puppy to eat or drink, McKay said, and was beyond saving. The person who brought it in knew it needed to be put down.

Crosland put the puppy into the snapping turtle’s tank, where it drowned and was eaten, according to McKay.

The three boys who watched all work on farms and understood what was happening, according to the mother of two of the boys.

But a school staff member overheard and started yelling at Crosland, then reportedly sent details of what happened via text message to a woman who on March 8 filed a police report.; 3/18/18, 3:52 PM
Paco Wové said...: The Preston woman who reported the turtle feeding incident to police told the Statesman she’s been threatened by local residents, and some people who are upset at Crosland have published his phone number and address on social media.; 3/18/18, 3:55 PM
Darrell said...: Did the Idaho Department of Dead Animals even think about mailing the turtle to Venezuela or North Korea? Huh?; 3/18/18, 4:04 PM
ccscientist said...: Well, they wanted to kill the teacher, but couldn't.; 3/18/18, 4:07 PM
walter said...: Maybe a trip to a vet before drowning it?

Snapper was unable to make it to a sanctuary city.

We had small turtles in a tank on the second level of childhood house.
One morning we found a couple of them had somehow made it out of the tank, fell down to the floor..and were about half way down the lengthy stairs.; 3/18/18, 4:13 PM
Darrell said...: Remember when the Wisconsin Dept. of Natural Resources SWAT team raided an animal shelter run by Nuns, guns a'blazing, to kill a baby deer that had been rescued by a concerned citizen and nursed back from the brink of death? That was an ecological necessity, too.; 3/18/18, 4:14 PM
Darrell said...: The baby fawn was named Giggles, if I recall.; 3/18/18, 4:18 PM
Paco Wové said...: I chuckled, Darrell.; 3/18/18, 4:20 PM
walter said...: https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/aug/1/13-wisconsin-officials-raid-animal-shelter-kill-ba/; 3/18/18, 4:21 PM
tcrosse said...: As I recall, in Terry Sothern's "Candy" there's a mention of Snapping Turtle Pussy. Or was this one a male ?; 3/18/18, 4:21 PM
Tom said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 3/18/18, 4:30 PM
traditionalguy said...: Turtles are a whole other culture from us. So when one attacks and eats a puppy dog from our culture, it must be killed to establish our dominance over it. What else could be done except maybe sell the turtle into slavery deportation.; 3/18/18, 4:31 PM
Sal said...: You put the turtle in a zoo or an animal sanctuary...not execute it.

I just found some invasive purple loosestrife on my property. Instead of killing it, I'm going to dig it up and replant it in the Arboretum where it can safely live out its life.; 3/18/18, 4:39 PM
Wince said...: If the teacher is fired, maybe a Democrat congressman can hire him or her to preserve the pension.; 3/18/18, 5:12 PM
The Godfather said...: "The turtle was put down for being a non-native species that required a permit". If Trump tweets this, you're going to see a rush for the southern border -- there's no "wall" in that direction.; 3/18/18, 5:24 PM
mandrewa said...: So I had this pond and it was full of duckweed. I mean completely covered. This isn't supposed to be good for a pond, so I wanted to get rid of it.

I found this fish, the Asian Grass Carp, that eats vegetation, online. It's not a native fish but you can buy grass carps that are sterile. But you have to get permission from your state biologist. So I called him up, but he didn't like the idea. He said, "Why don't you just get ducks?"

So I bought 60 baby ducks. I'd never raised ducks before but it was kind of fun. And eventually when they got bigger I let them loose at the pond. It took them about 3 days to clear that pond of duckweed. They were voracious eaters. And they liked the pond, and they stayed, and they were thriving. But then I noticed that they seemed to be disappearing. And I was finding half-eaten bodies in the water.

Finally, I figured it out. It was a snapping turtle. It was about three feet wide when I saw it. It killed all those ducks.

The next year, the duckweed did not come back. The ducks hadn't left even one fragment.

But as the summer started a red and green patterned scum appeared on the surface of the pond. I took samples and looked at it under the microscope and identified it. It was all one organism. Whether it was red or green depended on the phase it was in. It was single-celled and not an algae. It was kind of half-animal and half-plant, because it was mobile, and when it was in it's green phase it had chlorophyll. It was pretty distinctive. It's the only thing like this in North America so I'm pretty sure I got the right species. But here's the thing: it was neurotoxic. If you went in the water it could kill you.

It was visually spectacular. It made bright red and green swirls in the water, like candy. It's never been as bad as that first summer where it was there almost all summer long, but it shows up again for some days almost every year.

Maybe I should try to get the duckweed back.; 3/18/18, 5:40 PM
mandrewa said...: But correction, now that I think it about, it wasn't single-celled. It was a microscopic organism, but it was multi-cellular.; 3/18/18, 5:50 PM
Fernandinande said...: Now The Idaho Department of Dead Animals is arguing with the Federal Bureau of Turtles over who has jurisdiction because the turtle may have been invading an Indian reservation.; 3/18/18, 6:00 PM
Anonymous said...: Waiter, I'm in a hurry. I'll have the turtle soup and make it snappy.; 3/18/18, 6:54 PM
Big Mike said...: I did a little research, thinking that there's no way snapping turtles aren't native to Idaho, but it turns out that their range goes right up to the state border and stops.; 3/18/18, 10:10 PM
Big Mike said...: @mandrewa, I suspect you have Euglena in your pond. I also suspect you will need a professional's help getting rid of it permanently. Introducing duckweed won't help.; 3/18/18, 10:19 PM
Darrell said...: Copper Sulfate Pentahydrate - 99.0%. Treat in bands from the shore inward over time, if you want any fish/snapping turtles to survive.; 3/18/18, 10:37 PM
Big Mike said...: @Darrell, Euglena is pretty toxic to fish so it’s unlikely that he has to worry about damaging them. It takes a lot to kill a snapping turtle do who knows?

Goldfish are great for getting rid of duckweed, but I once saw a pond where there were no predators and the poor things literally had no room to swim. I’d estimate there were 15 or more 3” long fish per cubic foot of water. No idea why herons hadn’t found the pond; they don’t seem to mind suburban settings.; 3/18/18, 11:08 PM
Quaestor said...: mandrewa wrote: It was all one organism. Whether it was red or green depended on the phase it was in. It was single-celled and not an algae.

What you're describing is Euglena, a member of an unranked eukaryote group called Excavata which have characteristics of both plants and animals. The red color is indicative of Euglena sanguinea, but most are green. Like algae they are photosynthetic, but they can feed heterotrophically like protozoans. Some have flagella and even eyespots.

The neurotoxin you refer to is brevetoxin, which is produced by certain marine algae and not euglenoids.; 3/18/18, 11:44 PM
Quaestor said...: No idea why herons hadn’t found the pond; they don’t seem to mind suburban settings.

One of my friends had a koi pond that he used to fuss over constantly. One evening I while waiting for him to come out and join me on a night fishing expedition I watched a great blue heron alight on his pond embankment and then commence to devour at least half a dozen young koi (none of his fish were particularly nicely colored mostly brown and yellow). I never told my friend about the heron because I knew he'd try to kill it if he found out.; 3/18/18, 11:54 PM
jaed said...: My thought is that they couldn't very well kill the teacher, and given the amount of (deserved or otherwise) public outrage they had to do something.

So they executed the turtle for his sins.; 3/19/18, 12:08 AM
mandrewa said...: Quaestor, thanks. It's been awhile and my memory is imperfect. But it was Euglena sanguinea that I saw, or thought I saw, under the microscope. Its appearance under the microscope exactly matched what I found online.

But I wish I'd taken pictures of the pond, because it was surreal, and I can't find any pictures online that match what I saw with my eyes that summer. The Euglena sanguinea made these broad bands of red and green with a sharp border between them, a literal line. In the sunlight the red was intense and the contrast with the green was dramatic. Sometimes the wind would make an eddy on the surface and the red and green would wrap around each other, with alternating bands getting narrower and narrower toward the center of the eddy.

To correct my correction, yes, Euglena sanguinea is a single-celled organism. And to add something that I didn't say but sort of remembered, it eats other things, in addition to being photosynthetic.

The pond still has fish in it despite the Euglena, possibly because it's spring-fed. There's always fresh clean water entering it.

The basic problem, I would guess, is that there are too many nutrients. The spectacular Euglena bloom was driven by the 60 bodies of the ducks that had been eating bugs from a large area around the pond and that were killed by the snapping turtle. The Euglana sanguinea has never been so extensive and persistent, or dramatic, as that first summer, not that I'm even aware of what's going on the pond most of the time since I'm usually busy doing something else.; 3/19/18, 7:18 AM
SeanF said...: "Crosland couldn’t get the puppy to eat or drink, McKay said, and was beyond saving."

I'm confused. Was McKay beyond saving, or did McKay say Crosland was beyond saving?; 3/19/18, 8:24 AM
mikee said...: "There's good eating on a turtle." - Several people in Terry Pratchett's wonderful book, Small Gods.; 3/19/18, 2:15 PM