Snapping turtles have a bad reputation–surly, aggressive, bite you finger off–but it’s not well deserved. They tame very nicely if the human puts a little effort into it. I fed my snapper by hand, stroked his head and chin, and won him over.
They do grow kind of big, though.
I remember when I was about 4 years old, I wanted to play with a turtle, but my mother told me no. I guess she thought I would get bitten, so I changed my mind and found something else to do.
I caught a wild one once, a bit bigger than that. He was more than slightly irritated with me, and tried to bite, but to be fair, I did interrupt his plans. After I showed him to everyone, I put him in the lake, near where I found him, and he swam about 20’ away from me, then glanced backward to make sure he was far enough away from me, or perhaps he was just giving me a dirty look. 🙂 In this case, I definitely needed to stay clear of his mouth, because he wanted to bite me.
It takes a few days to calm them down and start taming them. Really, snapping turtles can be rather nice.