[Porchdog]

My mom used to make us snapping turtle soup.

The first one was a bit of an adventure. My brother and I were 9 or 10 and we had caught a pretty nice one. My dad got home and told us we could help clean it. We put it on the chopping block and waved a stick in front of it, dad chopped off the head with an axe.

As he was cutting the body out of the shell the legs and tail were still working against him. He eventually got the body out of the shell and cleaned up, but moms dog started howling. She was a miniature dachshund, she had been messing with the head and it latched on to her snout. It was a tougher job getting that head off the hound than skinning the turtle.

After that we would have turtle soup a couple times a year. We got a bit of a reputation, a couple local guys showed up with turtles for my mother (she wanted nothing to do with them before they were cleaned).