Over the years Phil and Jimmy have often fished or travelled along the stretch between Pangbourne and Goring and on several times have seen terrapins sunning themselves on a dead tree which has fallen into the water. Indeed a couple of weeks before Jimmy and Billy had also seen one.
The Captain asked Phil “Where do you think that these critters came from? “ The First mate answered “The source of these exotic, non-native species is thought to be two-fold: escapees from the Childe Beale just a couple of miles upstream or they are dumpees ,discarded by some selfish twit who doesn’t realise that terrapins like dogs are “ pets for life” but in their case they outlive dogs by a factor of three , and can lived for up to forty years.” And as I’ve told you many times in the past terrapins are reptiles not amphibians””Well what’s the difference? “asked the Cabin Boy , the First Mate replied “Reptiles are scaly things that live on land and have hard eggs and amphibians don’t!”
The offending species are probably red-eared terrapins recognised by a red stripe running down each side of the head.
The conversation then turned to viciousness of these creatures as encountered by fisherman when they had accidently caught them and that they possessed such powerful jaws that they could bite a finger off. I suppose that if we had been yanked in the water with a hooks in our mouths or worse embedded in our tongues, that we would have not tried to bite the angler but would have been happy to have produced a gun and made them “time immemorial” by putting them -the wrong side of the grass”.
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