Noodling, Norwegian Style

So, Tuesday night I stopped at the culvert to make sure water was still flowing out of our lake. The water is still about a foot over the culvert but the vortex was really small. I saw a brown mass stuck in it and figured it was partially clogged with weeds. Being tired and since I was a bachelor last week and had to cook my own dinner, I said to heck with it and started to drive home. A pickup flagged me down. It was one of my neighbors, Charles, and he asked me I saw the weeds in the culvert. He wanted to know if I thought he could remove them with a rake without getting wet. I said'go for it" as I was tired and wanted to go home.
My phone rings aboput a half hour later. Charles was down at the culvert, had got all wet and said the water was too deep. He said he only had waist high waders and needed chest high ones. I asked him if he wanted me to come on down and, of course, he said yes.
When I waded in, the water immediately got all murky and I couldn't see a thing. I reached down with my bare hands and felt what seemed to be a piece of metal wedged in the culvert. Then I grabbed onto what I thought was a piece of rope. I pulled on it with no success and finally stuck both hands down around this object and started to twist and tuen it. Finally it came unclogged and I pulled up, by it's shell, the largest snapping turtle I had ever seen. My response was "AAAAAHHHHH" and some words I won't repeat and I dropped it. It was floating on it's back, as I picked myself up from the mud, and we just stared at it. Of course, since we had now cleared the culvert, a very large vortex now formed and guess what? The turtle was sucked back into it. We stared at each other as now the culvert was plugged again, AND, we knew what was in it. I looked at Charkles and said, "Are you sure that turtle was dead?" He "thought so"...
Well, once the water cleared a bit, I saw the tail and started to yank on it. When it broke free, Charles grabbed it by the back of the shell and we pulled it out of the water. We flung it to keep it out of the wonderful vortex we had once again created. As I pulled myself out of the muck, Charles hollered "it's alive!" Sure enough, it was swimming around. I had Charles push it to shore so it wouldn't get sucked into the ^&**(^%$% culvert again, and there we were.... So, we picked it up with the shovel, walked it across the road, and deposited it into the neighboring lake.
I then went home and poured a giant highball. The next day, the good old boys at work said I was lucky to have all my fingers....
Next time the culvert is plugged, I ain't stoppin'
The crappies started to come in this weekend so fishing should be good next weekend for DeweyFest. But first, I gotta go and try and get another turkey.....