Justin Mathews Natural Setting #1

As I walked at a brisk pace to get ahead of the rest of the class, I had little time to really take in what was around me. The quick shower we had gotten just before our walk was enough knock the pollen off most things. As the sun shined through the trees it glistened off the water covered leaves, but also began to heat up the humid air again. Walking on I finally came to the bridge over the lake that Dr. Redick spoke of. After seeing lots of turtles sun bathing on logs weeks before around the Gatewood Trail, I was hoping to catch glimpse of the same thing here. Sure enough wherever there was a log lying on the water, turtles were lined all up and down crowding it. I tried to make my steps light, but as I crossed the first bridge most of the turtles hopped into the water. As I crossed onto the second bridge I looked over the edge where I could faintly see some fish swimming around a tree that was submerged. It was at this point that Ryan caught up with me and started looking in the water too. He had some goldfish with him. He crunched them up in his hand and dropped the bits into the water. Surprisingly the fish did not go after them at first, but this seemed to attract turtles out of no where. Slowly more turtles came and the fish also began to feast. At this point we were throwing whole goldfish in the water and the turtles were loving them. A good portion of the class was on the bridge now enjoying the sites of the turtles and fish. On the other side of the bridge we managed to stir up several cat fish as well. Then someone spotted a huge fish. One classmate offered that it might be a Coy. Then one girl gasped and said “Look at that turtle!” It was a snapping turtle, much larger and uglier than the rest. We used the goldfish to lure the snapping turtle over to where the catfish were in hopes of a spectacular kill, but no such luck. Soon after it was time to head back. I'm not sure what exactly we were supposed to look for or see while out on the Nolan Trail but I definitely had fun watching all the turtles and different types of fish.