The Pond

Snapping turtles in the pond eat bass, sunfish, and frogs. They do us no harm when we swim. But early this spring two Canada geese lingered, then built a nest. What I’d heard of, our neighbor feared: goslings, as they paddle about, grabbed from below by a snapper, pulled down to drown. So he stuck hunks of fat on huge, wire-leadered hooks attached to plastic milk-bottle buoys. The first week he caught three turtles and still there are more: sometimes he finds the bottles dragged ashore, the wire wrapped several times around a pine trunk and the steel hook wrenched straight as a pin.