GOING ABOVE AND BEYOND AT WORK

Most days our work is somewhat routine. However, sometimes there are surprises. 

While working "light maintenance", Paul was taking some bags of ice from the office to the camp store on his golf cart when his radio blared, "Can you go to site B-17 and capture the snapping turtle?"   Since the campground is family friendly, and we have kids riding bikes everywhere, it was in the best interest that the snapping turtle be removed.

After putting the ice in the store ice machine, Paul quickly headed to B-17 and began looking for a snapping turtle, which he imagined to be maybe 4 or 5 inches in diameter at most. Since B-17 is along the lake, he first searched the beach area -- no turtle in sight. As Paul was searching around the site, the neighbor in the next site came out and asked, "Are you looking for the snapping turtle?" It turns out the snapping turtle had gotten under the trailer parked at the site. A very BIG turtle was visible with his nose at the edge of the skirting at the base of the trailer. 

Paul called for additional assistance from the maintenance crew.  They first had to remove the skirting to have access to the turtle.  Then, a co-worker grabbed the turtle by the tail as it tried to scurry away at turtle speed. The turtle didn't like being picked up by the tail and tried to bite the worker by twisting his neck every which way. Yes, that is why they are called snapping turtles. In fact, this turtle had already bitten a guest who tried to feed the turtle lettuce by putting his hand near the turtle's head. Was this a smart thing to do? Not just "no" but "hell no".

The first three photos show the turtle close-up from different views. 

The sand had been raked recently. The turtle's shell is as long as the width of the rake.

Here you can see the tail is nearly as long as the turtle's shell.

For the safety of all, the turtle needed to be removed from the campground. Paul's co-worker put the turtle in the bed of a pick-up truck and took it to a nearby river, where he released it to a new home.

You can see several one inch hoses in the truck. This gives you an idea of the true size of this monster turtle. I would guess the shell was about 10 inches wide and maybe 13 or 14 inches long.

Why didn't we release the turtle back into our lake? It would have been a danger to the many campers and day visitors who swim in the 30-acre lake at the campground.

Another day, Paul was in his golf cart when a co-worker stopped his car to let him know of another problem.  The co-worker said the pigs, yes, pigs, were trying to get out of their cage and that the pigs knew how to open the gate.

The owner keeps two pigs in a back portion of his land behind the campground, about a block from any campsites.  He feeds them all summer and then has them butchered in the fall for food. The smell in the pig pen area was horrendous, as you might expect. Paul got to the cage and just held the gate shut until another worker could put a lock on the hasp. It was difficult to hold the gate closed while trying to hold my nose because of the pig smell. Apparently, the pigs wanted to eat the tall grass near the fence, and they were smart enough to put their noses under the gate and lift up to try to jiggle the hasp free.

In this view of the pigs, they are by their feeding trough, thinking that we were going to feed them. Wrong! All we wanted was a few photos for the blog. 

In case the pigs were strong enough to bend the hasp, we wrapped a chain around the gate and cage and locked it tight. Below you can see a close-up view of the wrapped chain to secure the pig "jail". The pigs are not getting out anytime soon.

In both of these instances, customer service was of the utmost importance. Could you imagine chasing the pigs through the campground if they had gotten loose?