One day in the late summer or early fall, likely during the administration of Governor Pa Ferguson in the 1910s, an alligator snapping turtle hatchling poked his head out of the rubbery eggshell that had been his home for the previous few months. The two-inch creature wriggled out of the sandy bank of a cypress-lined East Texas creek and slipped into the murky water of a small Sabine River tributary, near the Texas-Louisiana border. There, Brutus—as he would later be christened—spent his days in solitude. Every day he would rest on the creek bed with his mouth ajar, using his pink, wormlike tongue to lure carp, gar, smaller turtles, and crawfish to stray close to his beak. He also happily scavenged any dead or dying creature—mammals…
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