An Unexpected Visitor

So I'm cleaning out the garage yesterday, throwing numerous green garbage bags of junk into the backyard until garbage day comes. Casey, my little dog, is by my side, hubby is in the back doing work, and daughter is on the deck stringing little lights into our deck lattice. Just a regular day, and since it was so beautiful out, we eat dinner out there too. After dinner, hubby hears a scuffling under the garbage bag pile...thinking it's a mouse, he calls me over, interrupting my solace of reading and relaxing on the deck.
I go over and look down as he lifts up the garbage bag. At first I think it's a huge mushroom under there... then I see the tail and think it's a snake... nope ....a HUGE (and I do mean HUGE) snapping turtle was chomping down on our garbage (and in chewing a hole in the bag, caused it to leak packing "popcorn" all over him). Wow! We have never seen such a large turtle in the wild... I carefully measure (from a safe height) from the back of his carapace to his nose, just slightly peeking out the front; 16 inches long and 11 inches wide ... that doesn’t include his tail, which is nearly as long as his shell. (That’s about 39 cm, which is larger than the average adult size of 35 cm, which I find out later).

Now, we don’t live in the country; we live in a city sub-division that is about 20 years old. What the heck was he doing in our yard, at least a mile away from the river? His back was covered in mud and moss, as well as a few leeches, so he wasn't out of water long. We could only figure out that he (or she, I didn't dare check) had come up the river, into the culvert that runs along the highway behind us, and then gotten into our yard across the highway (which isn't fenced, has really long grass along the fencing) via the underground culvert that opens up at our place. Our yard is long; nearly 250 feet... I can't imagine how a huge turtle like this got right up to our house with no one seeing him!
I shooed the dog inside, daughter got her video camera, me my digital and I got out our old metal kennel for hubby to coax the poor thing into it...that's when the turtle showed us the power of his jaws and the quickness of his lunge... snappers can extend their necks another half the length of their shell; he could cut a person's finger or toe off with ease.
We loaded the kennel into the back of hubby’s truck and drove to the river to release him. A few people down there saw us lift the beast out of the truck and took a bunch of photos too.

We took him down to the riverside, and when he saw / smelled the water, he went up on his hind legs, snapping in the air…he was anxious to get back! Hubby carefully unlocked the front kennel door, and it only took seconds for the snapper to push open the door and walk down to the water... soon he was swimming free and it felt really good.