by Katie Alston

In the undergrowth by a pond in Kent woodland, lay a wrinkled and dangerous beast, with the power to slice through skin and bone with its powerful jaws...

It was a snapping turtle and it is thought the vicious creature, known to hiss and bite, could be responsible for the lack of birds on nearby waters for the past five or six years.

Native to America the tough turtle can live off a diet of ducks and ornamental fish, and became popular with exotic pet owners in the 1990s thanks to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

The wild common snapping turtle was discovered on Monday evening when veterinary nurse Stacey Vangent was dropping off colleague Janis Harris to her house on a dirt track off the Western Link, in Oare, near Faversham.

The aggressive animal was sitting on the driveway and Mrs Vangent had to move quickly to capture the creature and put him in a dustbin.

She then took the 'large dinner plate' sized turtle back to the Taochim Vets in Shunters Close where she has worked for the past 10 years.

It was placed into an enclosure until a more suitable home could be found for it, with a reptile specialist in Maidstone.

Mrs Vangent said: "The turtle is so dangerous it shouldn't have been in the wild in the first place.

"If a child had found it or even someone who doesn't know much about animals then they could quite easily have lost a finger. They have an incredibly nasty bite on them.

"I have never come across anything like this before and I have been a veterinary nurse for 17 years. It scared the life out of me.

"Snapping turtles get incredibly big and the most likely story is that someone couldn't look after it anymore and got rid of him without a second thought for the consequences.

"It has been quite stressful for the turtle and it has been hard to find someone to take it, as we didn't want him to fall into the wrong hands.

"We have been feeding it fish, and I just hope that he can find a home that knows what they are taking on."