Before her daughter grew old enough that it was no longer cool to hang out with her outdoorsy mom, Laura Potter took her to most of Nebraska’s State Parks, but none more often than the Schramm Education Center near Gretna.
There, they would greet and be greeted by Big Snap Daddy, a common snapping turtle believed to be the world’s largest.
“When my daughter was really little, she used to call him a dinosaur, and I was like, ‘He’s not a dinosaur,” the Omaha mom and viral crustacean advocate recalled this week. “And then later on, as she got older, I’d go, ‘There’s your dinosaur. And she’d go, ‘Mom, that’s not a dinosaur.’ She would finally be able to recognize him as a species of snapping turtle.
“So it was always a running joke that Big Snap Daddy was a dinosaur.”
That childlike conception of the giant turtle was not unique to Potter’s young daughter. Tony Korth, the state park’s longtime aquarium director, used the same word to describe the longtime fixture of the center.
“He really did look more prehistoric than anything,” Korth said. “Almost like a dinosaur.”
Indeed, he was of a different time. Big Snap Daddy, the turtle who awed generations of visitors at the state aquarium where he grew far older and far larger than any living member of his species, died Monday. He was thought to be nearly 100.
The iconic turtle was euthanized after his health “declined rapidly over the weekend,” Nebraska’s Game and Parks Commission announced Tuesday. It was a “heartwrenching” conclusion to come to, said University of Nebraska-Lincoln herpetologist Dennis Ferraro.
“Like I told my students, I’ve known this turtle for 30 years … and so it’s been a fixture to me,” he said. “It was very, very difficult for me to say, ‘Let’s euthanize it. It’s in pain. It’s not gonna make it.’ I thought about that for three days.”
Big Snap had been on display as an education ambassador animal at the aquarium for most of the last three decades, ever since an angler pulled him from the Missouri River near Peru in the early 1990s.
By then, he was already nearly 50 pounds and thought to be around 70 years old. The fisherman decided to hand the turtle over to the state to be placed on exhibit.
“At that time, he was the biggest common snapping turtle we had ever heard of,” said Korth, who joined the aquarium staff in 1991, a year or two before Big Snap arrived.
“We never dreamed that he would live another 30 years,” he said.
But Big Snap did. And he doubled in size in his decades in captivity, enjoying bison, rainbow trout and venison — or “roadkill chunks of deer,” Ferraro said. Big Snap lived in Ferraro’s lab at UNL for two years in the late 2010s as the state built him a new, 600-gallon home at the Schramm Education Center that he moved into in 2019.
He weighed 102 pounds a month before his death. He did not move much, Korth said. He mostly sat still, waiting for food.
He did not change much, either, Korth said. In his decades in the state’s care, the snapping turtle “did not warm up” to staff, who used forceps to feed him and knew well enough to keep their distance when they cleaned his tank.
“The neat thing about Big Snap is he had just as nasty of a temperament as he did when we got him as when he passed on,” Korth said. “He was always ready to take your finger off if you got too close to him.”
His caretakers grew close with Big Snap anyway, Korth said. They became attached to the giant turtle that for decades anchored the aquarium. They took his sudden decline hard.
Over the weekend, Ferraro said Big Snap became unable to hold his head above water. His breathing labored. His heart rate dropped to six beats per minute. The state’s leading herpetologist consulted with a handful of other experts. They all agreed it was best to euthanize Big Snap.
“It was rough,” Korth said. “We’ve known for a long time that this day would come, that he can’t last forever.”
Big Snap had no known children. There will be no funeral. He leaves behind the tank the state built just for him and the visitors who found him there.
“He lived a big life,” Korth said.
3 Comments
Interesting that none of the usual suspects who suffer from FFP derangement syndrome are here bemoaning this “personal” and “emotional” story of the cool turtle (rest in peace king <3). It's almost like they are only triggered by journalism that dares to question their specific worldview…
I wish I could have met him!
My question is why would they keep him in captivity? It’s not what the turtle wanted, and if we care about the turtle, why not let him live where he was living naturally?
It would be different if the turtle seemed happy to be there and warming up to his new home, but that never seemed to happen. If it only benefits us humans, is it right?