Woman Saves Baby Turtles from Alleged Soup Chef in Flooded Danbury Parking Lot

This story has it all, from soup to nuts and it took place right here in Danbury.

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I'm a little late (very late) on this one but if I don't tell this story, who will? I found a video on Tik Tok that was posted on September of 2021 right after Hurricane Ida. If you believe the young woman who posted the video, she saved the lives of a pair of baby turtles that day.

The woman's screen name is sage_1992 and the video was shot in the parking lot of Danbury's Walmart, which was flooded due to the hurricane. The clip starts with a shot of a woman in light purple pants who appears to be in search of something. As the camera is fixed on the lady, the user sage_1992 says "OK, this lady is fishing for turtles."

@sage_1992 Saving baby turtles from a lady trying to eat them at Walmart #floodingdanbury #turtles ♬ original sound - sage_1992

Sage follows that up by saying "there's legitimate turtles in the Walmart parking lot because of the flooding, they were struggling in the water so I went in the water and got them both out."

The first viewer remark came from a user who goes by fried chicken who said "they're snapping turtles...they live in the water...how they struggling?"

Later, Sage attempts to set one of the turtles free by placing it back in the water, near the woods, hoping it will swim to freedom but instead it floats to the side. Finally, she places them in a spot where she believes they will be safe from the alleged turtle soup-chef and encourages them to "go, go" and then, the video comes to an abrupt end.

The suspense is killing me, I need to know what happened with these turtles? Sage, if you are out there contact me, I must know how the story ends. There's another question, how did Sage know the other woman was searching for turtles to catch and eat? She answered that question in the video thread, claiming to have had a conversation with the woman, Sage said:

"She said they were for soup and that she was only taking the allowed amount, which apparently is 5 if you have a license which no idea if she does."

All the viewers seemed to be in a agreement that the turtles in the video were snapping turtles. I looked up the law because I needed to know how many snapping turtles can a CT resident legally capture or trap?

It seems the woman is correct, according to DEEP (The Department of Energy and Environmental Protection), a CT resident is allowed 5 turtles on their person from a "daily" perspective but that person must have a Turtle Trapping Endorsement.

Here's a fun twist, they are only allowed to trap 10 turtles per season. So, if you have two big days, you have to sit the rest of the year out and watch these smug turtles do whatever the hell they want.

I tried to find some illegal activity here but based on the explanation of the law from DEEP and the video evidence, I found that nothing illegal happened here, unsavory maybe but not illegal.

The regulations talk about the allowable trapping methods, turtles maximum shell size (13") and mention when turtle trapping season is (July 15 - September 30). But can you imagine there is not one mention of whether it's cool to walk around plucking baby turtles out of a Walmart parking lot? That seems odd to me, I don't know about you.

This video made me go in search of even more answers and I found that turtle soup is not as bizarre a dish as I thought, it's pretty mainstream. In fact, Taste of Home shares their traditional turtle soup recipe and described the meal as "hearty" and "snappy."

The recipe calls for 1 and 1/3 lbs of turtle meat. Is that the typical amount? If that is what you need for an average turtle meal, than that woman picking up these mini-turtles in the parking lot, is more absurd than this article.

And they say Tik Tok is useless.

P.S. I didn't see a minimum shell size for legal turtle trapping and that is upsetting.