For Adults only, please

Like some prehistoric pay-per-view, the epic struggle between the snappers drew the prurient attentions of
our goldfish, who are in attendance at the afternoon fight -- or love match.
Look closely toward the top and you'll see their gold coloring.

The Claw -- handy love-making tool.

We missed Trevor Plouffe's Grand Slam Homerun in the third inning today because we were distracted by two huge prehistoric snapping turtles either battling to the death or spinning in a love knot. We don't know enough about the mating or territorial actiities of these extra-large turtles to tell the difference, but it sure had us distracted for a while.

The Twins had a whale of an inning, (7 runs) but we were transfixed by the frenzy, then quickly googled "snapping turtles" to see if our dear painted turtles would be safe in their company. Inconclusive. Kathleen continued her research on YouTube, pulling up a variety of grotesque action videos.

It appears the snappers outweigh our painted turtles by a lot. Sometimes we have counted 15 average painted turtles on our island and we would hate to disrupt the order of our universe, so we hope these snappers are just passing through.
The action in the pond continued through the fourth inning, so we went outside for a closer look. Our neighbors, Carla and Barry, drawn purely by a sense of scientific inquiry, joined your photographer at his observation post. The trysters didn't care, preoccupied with the matter at hand.
Despite the intense splashing, twisting and struggling, we concluded unanimously that we were not witnessing a territorial dispute.
We returned to the ballgame, the Twins were scoring big time too, leading the White Sox 12 - 2.
That's a battle we understand.
After nine innings, the Twins had won 13-3, the skies had clouded up and a thunderstorm was imminent. . . but down in the pond, they were still going at it.

Ecstacy? Or just catching his breath. We're not sure.