@why i considered that last part too, it's a very good point. i tried caring for a baby snapping turtle sunning in a footpath until it was old enough to have a good chance but my step dad didn't want to buy what ended up being a critical thing (i didn't have a credit card to access my money then despite asking) and i feared it would drown without a rock it could climb on (he thought i could just find one but it was too young it needed a dock made for easy climbing). i didn't want it to die overnight (another reptile slash amphibian death on my hands would be very traumatic, i had an experience where i accidentally killed a tadpole when i was thirteen by not cooling the water i had boiled to remove the chemicals. so i wanted to take it to a place the petco guy recommended with lots of food and cover and few predators, but my mom just said where it came from is fine (because she knew where that was), why would its mother leave it someplace dangerous. i lost a shoe in sucking mud delivering it by the river. i donated the maximum donation of a hundred dollars to a local turtle rescue program that admonished readers against adopting baby turtles and convinced me i could return it. of course weeks later i saw it squished flat with a footprint in it, dying in the exact manner i had feared, from the state of its body probably at least ten days before. i buried it near the river and took a picture of the location. it was awful and i was very angry at my family at first till i realized they had no bad intentions, they just wanted what they thought would work and what convenient. what sucks is i feel guilty still because i didn't notice it couldn't properly get to the rock, because i had planned to see my half brother for weeks that day at my grandmas retirement community i wish i had known there was a lake with turtles there, because while it likely would've died as most baby turtles do it would've died and nourished another organism. not met its end by an oblivious pedestrian. it was awful.