The New York Times had an article about “Chonkosaurus”, a very large snapping turtle spotted in the Chicago River. According to a wildlife biologist they quote, she’s female and probably full of eggs, one reason she looks so…chonky. The wildlife biologist estimated her weight at 40 pounds (18kg) and her age at 50 years based on photos and video.
The article went on to say that the Chicago River had essentially been an open sewer before the passage of the Clean Water Act in 1973. Now it’s a nice place to go kayaking on a sunny weekend!
But they never quite connected the dots. Ms. Chonkosaurus hatched about 50 years ago–in other words, she was born at the same time as the Clean Water Act passed. She’s lived through the entirety of the river recovery. When the eggs she’s carrying hatch, they will be born into a profoundly different–better!–world than she was.
I’m a little older than Chonkosaurus and the Clean Water Act. When I was a child the idea of swimming or kayaking in a metropolitan river would have been…well. Jokes about up shit creek without a paddle because the paddle dissolved in the toxic sludge? I remember seeing the oily sheen on the Ohio River in Cincinnati. It was just what a city river looked like.
Now…May 2023…there are warning on television about swimming in the Willamette River in Portland during the current heat emergency. Because the water is too cold! Jump into the water and the cold shock can paralyze you long enough to drown. But it’s clean (clean snow melt fresh off the Cascade mountains, brrr).
