Just another quiet day at the wetland until I found a stash of empties hidden away under some trees.

It took some crawling around and working my way through tangled branches, but the karmic reward was great, because right after I'd gathered these ...

... I found a Very Cool Thing:

Can you figure it out? Here's another clue:

Got it now? It's a snapping turtle skeleton, upside down, and the papery brown stuff (which was under the bones) is a piece of what's left of the shell covering. I couldn't find the skull at first, but oh, there it is over there, posing demurely with another bone.

The garbage came in handy to indicate scale. Bottlecap:

Beer bottle:

These fit together to form the shell:

And this is the, uh ... well, I'll have to explore turtle anatomy a bit more. I'll post some more pictures at a later date.