Nest One

Last year in June 2008, female snapping turtle’s came out from their home in the Assabet River and laid their eggs in the backyard of Hudson High School. As part of an ongoing Herpetology Project, students from the A.P. Chemistry class, carefully dug up these nests and placed the unearthed eggs into a pre-built nest on much safer ground. Surrounding these nests was wire meshing that prevented predators from attaching the nests. The wire covering went all around the nest, and deep enough in the ground, so that predators would not be able to dig under it and reach the eggs.

This September 2008 the newly arrived A.P. Chemistry students went out to the nests and proceeded to watch the snapping turtle eggs hatch. As these turtle’s hatched the students collected them into buckets and brought them inside the school to weight them and count how many were collected. Data were collected from a total of four nests. Not all of the turtles from every nest were collected and there were some eggs in every nest that did not hatch, but the data collected is accurate.