Emblazoned with the Turtle Rescue League logo, and with stickers urging fellow motorists to stop for turtles on the road, the cars serve as emergency vehicles for transporting injured turtles to the thousand-square-foot turtle hospital that occupies the basement-and that may house, at any one time, between two hundred and a thousand turtles. Both are mounted with strobe lights-like the ambulances they are. Parked in the drive are a white smart car and a black Scion. It bears a sign in front that reads, “Turtle Lover Parking Only.

A volunteer retrieves from a pond a snapping turtle with the bolt of a crossbow through the neck.Įach spring is nonstop crisis management at Turtle Rescue League-ever since Alexxia and Natasha established a hospital for freshwater turtles and tortoises in the basement of their suburban home in Southbridge, Massachusetts.Īmid all the other houses on the street, their two-story saltbox stands out: It’s a blazing, neon green. An animal control officer is coming with a painted turtle chewed by a dog. THIS TIME OF YEAR, the phones are always ringing: A Good Samaritan has found a snapper hit on the road with a broken shell. Mothers are used to hearing their grown daughters say they’re too busy to talk, but Alexxia has the perfect excuse: she’s doing oral surgery on a very large, wild, and fully alert snapping turtle. I hear her mother’s cheerful chatter on the other end, until Alexxia cuts her off. She grabs it from a holster on her leg and wedges it between shoulder and ear. Chunky lunges, nearly dislodging the cork. Alexxia touches one of them with a dental instrument. He now has several new pockets of pus inside his mouth that need draining. Yesterday, Alexxia drained an abscess from a puncture wound left by a fishhook-the larger of two wounds that brought Chunky here from the Marblehead pond that had been his home for perhaps the past hundred years. With a patient like this, anesthesia is avoided whenever possible. The cork does double duty: it keeps the turtle from biting and props his mouth open for the coming procedure, which must be done while he’s awake. She pops it into Chunky’s capacious gape. An array of surgical instruments await nearby, but none is more important than the object for which Alexxia now reaches: a champagne cork. With her right hand, Alexxia, forty-six, pries apart the turtle’s sharp jaws with a gynecological tool. He’s so big and powerful that Natasha and her partner, Alexxia Bell, need to use an electric screwdriver to secure, and then remove, the screws holding the lid shut over his gigantic stock tank.Īs Chunky’s scaly, clawed feet whirl, Natasha, forty-four, grips the turtle’s slick carapace while she perches on the swivel stool near the operating table. Chunky Chip, whose shell is the size of a gladiator’s shield, weighs forty-eight pounds. “He’s probably the third largest one we’ve ever had,” she says. ShellShock Live can therefore provide endless hours of entertainment.NATASHA NOWAK’S strong arms strain to hold Chunky Chip in position. There are also four different modes to choose from such as 'Deathmatch' and 'Juggernaut'. The goal is to knock out all other tanks as quickly as possible. The graphics are two-dimensional, opponents will fire shells at one another taking into account metrics such as wind and the angle of attack. Some users feel that its overall style is somewhat similar to the Scorched Earth gaming franchise.Įach player is equipped with a tank placed upon an angled battleground. Up to eight players can do battle simultaneously and thanks to extremely bright colors, this game boasts a somewhat retro 'feel'. There are various tanks and other weapons to choose from, so fans of upgrade-rich platforms will certainly be in for a treat. ShellShock Live is a multiplayer game which provides players with the opportunity to do battle within a real-time virtual world. Kyle Juffs Updated 3 years ago Fun and exciting multiplayer artillery-based game

Shellshock live deftly