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Crissman’s playground deemed an egg-cellent location by snapping turtle mother

Late this May, a mother snapping turtle found herself the perfect spot to lay her eggs – the lower playground of Crissman Elementary!

Thankfully, a Shelby Waterworks staff member noticed the turtle and alerted a teacher walking into the building.

“We were lucky that someone was able to spot the turtle before she buried her eggs and took off, otherwise we might not have noticed the eggs in the woodchips,” Crissman Principal Sofia Papastamatis said.

Crissman Elementary will be under construction this summer with a redesigned parking lot and new playgrounds installed, so the Crissman team was anxious to find a rescue organization to save the eggs.

After barricading the ‘turtle zone’ on the playground so that students, staff and families did not disturb the eggs, Happy Snappy came to the rescue within a day of the mother turtle laying her eggs.

All 33 eggs were recovered by Happy Snappy from the playground and placed in an incubator for them to properly mature before hatching and being released by the organization.

It was an egg-citing time at Crissman Elementary!