CHICAGO — Joey Santore has seen plenty of things in his time, from spitting cobras in South Africa to other wonders of nature that his travels as a botanist provide.
But when the La Grange native, who now lives on the Texas-Mexico border, decided to go out on the Chicago River last week and enjoy the first prime spring days Chicago offered up, he never expected to witness what he did.
As he and a colleague spent the day on kayaks documenting interesting plant life, Santore spotted what he suspects was a 60-pound snapping turtle near the Division Street bridge. The sight, which Santore preserved on video from his cell phone, allowed him to document the occasion in sometimes colorful language as he captured photos and video of the large aquatic reptile.
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Santore, who hosts a comedy educational podcast with his friend Al Scorch called “Crime Pays But Botany Doesn’t,” nicknamed the female turtle “Chonkosaurus.”
“You see something like that, and it feels pretty good, especially what has been historically such a polluted and toxic place,” Santore told Patch on Wednesday. “I’m very familiar with the Chicago River, I’ve spent a lot of time around it, I’ve smelled it — I’ve known that smell since I was a kid — but it was remarkable just to see this thing apparently very healthy.”
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While filming the sight, Santore provided the soundtrack for the video, saying, “Look at you, you’re healthy. You look good. I’m real proud of you. You’re eating healthy. Have you ever heard of liquid salad?”
Santore said that he and his friends initially saw two snapping turtles — a pregnant female and what Santore believed to be her mate. Santore said he has been told other people have seen presumably the same snapping turtle in the same area by the bridge.
He expects the female was 20 to 30 years old — if not older — and says that snapping turtles can live to be 600 years of age. While most are found in warmer climates and in swampy areas, he presumes the turtle he witnessed last week has somehow found a way to survive a Chicago winter.
Since posting the video on social media, Santore says the response has been overwhelming. While the group saw other varieties of turtles and fish (including Asian carp), nothing compared to the behemoth turtle that has given him his social media 15 minutes of fame.
“It’s all about the context,” Santore, who has since made at least one morning TV news appearance in Chicago, said Wednesday of the response to his photos and video. “You see this giant snapping turtle — just to see something that big, an aquatic reptile that big on the Chicago River surrounded by industry and hundreds of thousands of people – was pretty cool.”
He added: “I just wanted to share it, and I didn’t expect it to blow up like that.”
Santore, who will soon be traveling overseas to do more documentation for his botanist job, said that although snapping turtles are native to the region, the mere size and location of last week’s sighting has created a buzz similar to the 2019 “Chance The Snapper” phenomenon that held Chicago’s collective interest.
“I think people are excited about it because they don’t get to see that kind of thing where it is,” Santore told Patch. “People don’t know that nature — for the lack of a better word — is right beneath their feet, especially in an urban environment.”
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