Boathouse Snapper, extended neck

Somewhere in Park Slope

Before sliders were bite-sized burgers, they were these, whose kind has been around since before dinosaurs, although I'm not sure there's many Box Turtles left thanks to automobile culture. When I was very young my father would come across them as he puttered around in his VW bug, pick them up to protect them and bring them home. Then they'd live in a muddy pit in our backyard for a while, eventually wondering off. On the other hand, Snapping Turtles seem to be doing fine, I saw one that was about a foot and a half long on a trail in Rhode Island last year. I'm not crazy about them because of their reputation for snagging ducklings, I'm glad the coons and possums get at their eggs.

Joseph Mitchell writes in On the Bottom of the Harbor that Terrapin Soup, made from the Diamondback I believe, used to be on the menu of any NYC restaurant worth its salt and pepper. I came across this from the Princeton website.

In Colonial times, Diamondbacks were abundant and a routine part of the diet of tidewater settlers. Wood cites an account of slaves going on a hunger strike until promised something else to eat (in similar stories about stipulations in the contracts of indentured servants, the offending fare is lobster, salmon, or shad). After terrapin soup became a staple of gourmet restaurants in the late 19th century, unregulated commercial hunting drove the species to the brink of extinction. As Wood wrote in a scientific paper, epicures "considered diamondbacks to be the ultimate treat for cultured palates. Pound for pound, diamondbacks were unquestionably the most expensive meat in the world" -- on the market, a dozen prime females could fetch $125. He believes the species was saved in part by the coming of Prohibition, which made sherry, the other key ingredient in terrapin soup, unavailable, and by a further reduction in demand brought on by the Great Depression.

Hmmm, my sherry amour. I'm surprised to learn that it had anything to do with saving Diamondbacks.