As you can see by the dramatic reconstruction of this event I was driving to my mom's house and saw the cars in front of me swerving around an object in the road. I almost went around it too until I realized it was a live turtle. It was very large, the size of a dinner platter. I pulled off the road and got out of the car to move it out of the road. I thought it would just shrink passively back into it's shell during the transition. I thought wrong.

When I picked it up it reached it's head back and snapped at me, barely missing my hand. I dropped it immediately and jumped back.. as you do when something tries to take your hand. It was glaring and hissing at me as traffic backed up on both sides of the road. A mom with some kids stopped to ask if they could have the turtle.. I said sure, but he bites. The turtle hissed at the kids and they ran away from it, deciding maybe it wouldn't make a good pet.

Finally a man had enough waiting and got out of his car and tried to pick it up like I did and almost got bitten too. Then he kind of kicked it gently and at the end wound up picking it up and giving it a gentle toss across to the grass on the side of road. Then we all got back in our cars and drove away, leaving the turtle to go lay her eggs or whatever. He/she is very lucky no one felt like making turtle soup!