CHICAGO – If a massive snapping turtle ever had a name, Chonkosaurus would be a perfect epithet.
Joey Santore was kayaking down the Chicago River last Friday, performing a plant survey near Goose Island. What he once thought was a sandbag that somebody had thrown off the bridge onto a rotting pylon turned out to be something downright monstrous.
When he got about 80 feet away from it, he could tell it was a turtle.
“That’s a Chicago River snapper. Are you kidding me?” said Santore in the video showing the reptile basking in the sun on a pile of rusty chains. “Look at that beast.”
Santore, who lives in Texas, was visiting some family and friends in Chicago at the time of the huge encounter. Santore told FOX Weather that he travels around the world filming plants and making educational videos about their ecology and evolution.
‘SUCH A FLORIDA THING’: TAMPA TURTLE SEEN HITCHING RIDE WITH ALLIGATOR ‘LIKE IT’S A HORSE’
Santore said he has never seen a snapping turtle that large and believes it was probably a pregnant female weighing 60 pounds, if not a little bit more. He joked in his video, inviting the turtle out to eat.
Santore told FOX Weather that he grew up in Chicago and said the once-channelized industrial canal has historically been a polluted body of water. He was happy to see the snapper thriving on the once-such-a-toxic tributary that is slowly getting cleaned up and restored after native plants were added up the river.
“Growing up there, I mean, you could always smell the river when you got close to it,” Santore recalled. “Probably from the excess fertilizer that was dumped in there would cause these algal blooms.”
After the years of cleanup, Santore said there are beavers on the river as well as various native fish species, not just the invasive Asian carp.
If you are wondering what things the turtle has been eating, you are not alone. Santore joked at the same thing.
“I’m real proud of you,” he said. “You been eating healthy? You ever heard of liquid salad?”
According to Friends of the Chicago River, there are two species of snapping turtles in North America. The common snapping turtle can be found throughout Illinois, while the alligator snapping turtle is only located in the southern region of the state.
According to officials, the two look physically different because of the alligator snappers’ prehistoric vibe with their large spikes on their shells compared to common snapping turtles’ smooth shells.
According to the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, 260 species of turtles have been found worldwide.