14 DAY TRIAL // This past Thursday, authorities in California, US, took a rather peculiar suspect into custody. Long story short, they captured a 70-pound (about 32-kilogram) common snapping turtle that was simply wandering the streets.
According to NBC New York, the animal was found not far from the local La Cañada Flintridge Country Club. At the time it was discovered, it was sitting close to a pond.
Having been rescued, the snapping turtle was taken to the Forever Exotic Animal Sanctuary in Phelan. By the looks of it, the animal is to remain at this facility for the rest of its life.
Since snapping turtles are not native to the area, police officers suspect that this freakishly big reptile used to be somebody's pet, and that it either made a run for it or was simply abandoned in the wild, the same source details.
Unlike other reptiles of this kind, snapping turtles are surprisingly vicious. Thus, they have an impressive appetite, and wildlife specialists say that they constitute a threat to natural ecosystems.
“They’re very detrimental to the native wildlife here. They eat everything that they can fit in their mouths, and apparently by the size of this one, it has,” Joel Almquist with Forever Wild said in a statement.