Turtle eggs rescued on elementary school playground will start hatching soon

SHELBY TOWNSHIP — Turtle eggs discovered on the playground of an elementary school two months ago appear to be doing well.

A mother snapping turtle was found in May at the lower playground of Crissman Elementary School by a Shelby Township Department of Public Works staff member who noticed the turtle and alerted a teacher.

Crissman Elementary School Principal Sofia Papastamatis said it was surprising to have the turtle on the school grounds.

“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,” she said in a Utica Community Schools press release.

Papastamatis said the kids were super excited when the turtles were found.

After blocking off part of the playground so that students, staff and families did not disturb the turtle’s eggs, the school district said that Happy Snapper Rescue came to Crissman within a day. Crissman is undergoing construction work this summer involving a parking lot redesign and new playgrounds, so the Crissman staff needed to find a rescue organization to save the eggs.

The rescue is in Oxford and focuses on rehabilitating native injured turtles and getting them back to the wild.

Happy Snapper Rescue took all 33 eggs from the playground and placed them in an incubator to mature them before hatching. The goal is to then release the young turtles back into the wild.

The eggs are expected to hatch in the early part or middle of August. The eggs were “candled,” and with a light shining behind an egg, one could see the developing turtle moving inside with what appeared to be a leg and a tail.

Sarah Matuszak, of Happy Snapper Rescue, said that if the babies aren’t ready when they hatch, the rescue will keep them as long as they need to be able to survive in the wild.

“Sometimes we overwinter them to give them a better chance at survival, but we may decide to release some this year,” she said.