People who claim to have seen the Loch Ness monster or other such oddities in the natural world deserve more respect. Spend enough time outdoors and you will eventually see something the brain cannot reconcile with its normal expectations.

That happened to me last week. Big, orange-breasted, male bluegills were guarding spawning reds in a secluded farm pond but were eager to interrupt their duties long enough to gulp an elk hair caddis. Extracting the fly from a bull 'gill's lip, I glanced out across the pond and beheld the initially unexplainable.

Two rounded humps cut the surface, maybe three or four feet apart. Rippling waves spread out from each hump, as if a long sinuous creature were swimming across the lake. Had it been one creature, it would have been a large one of unfamiliar form. Good binoculars and some observation time, though, revealed the truth. Over the next 90 minutes, I witnessed the courtship and reptilian rapture of two large snapping turtles.

We tend to think of turtles as sluggish and passive, but the mating ritual is an active aquatic ballet. I leaned the fly rod into a wild rose bush, got out the binoculars and settled down to watch.

The two humps paddled nearer to one another, then became still. The heads and outspread feet were clearly visible beneath the surface. Each turtle appeared entranced with the other. Their snouts were only inches apart, yet they remained motionless, gazing, apparently, into one another's small eyes. Dozens of times after one of these "gazing" sessions, one of the turtles would expel a stream of bubbles from its hook-jawed snout. Each time the bubbles appeared the other turtle responded with some form of contact. Most often, the reacting turtle would bite violently at the neck or shell of the other. Other times, it would attempt to climb over its partner, pushing it beneath the water.

Without the knowledge I later gained by reading about snapping turtle sexual behavior, it was impossible to tell one gender from another. Both appeared about the same size, although males grow much larger. Herpetologists assign the biting behavior to the male, but I could find no reference to the tempting bubbles I saw released by the female.

The colors of those parts we seldom see from above were surprising. Far from the expected dull, olive drab, the undersides, throat, ventral surface of the tail and even the bottoms of the broad feet of one individual were a vivid salmon color. Corresponding parts of its partner were reddish-orange.

When the heads thrust above the surface, which was often, they appeared enormous, much larger than expected compared to the protruding shell.

Finally the turtles engaged in reptilian embrace, at times lying still, then rolling, clawed feet slapping audibly on the surface. Their heads and bulbous throats were often aligned. Frequently one would nip, less violently now, at the other. Shells, tails, feet and heads all appeared alternately above the water as the pair rolled and splashed. Eventually they parted, only to resume the "gazing," bubble discharge, and biting that initiated their union.

Snappers, I later learned, have no defined mating season. They court whenever conditions are right, generally influenced by the gradually, and variably, warming weather rather than by the predictable day length as in some species. Accommodating meteorological variability, the female can store the male's semen within herself for months, delaying fertilization until the optimum time. Delayed fertilization also helps snapping turtle populations spread. A female can travel overland to a new pond, marsh or lake where no other snappers live, initiate fertilization without the now absent male, then lay her 30 to 60 eggs in a newly colonized habitat.

To nest, the female leaves the water and excavates a cavity on dry land with her hind feet. She buries the eggs and then leaves. The young turtles must find their own way back to the water. Raccoons, foxes, coyotes, and minks raid the nests and prey on hatchlings. Once they reach water, the young are vulnerable to fish, snakes and wading birds. Here, north of alligator country, adult snappers have few enemies other than man.

"Nessie" and other creatures of lore add a sense of mystique to our view of the outdoor world. But the real, the utterly natural, yet seldom seen lives of well-known creatures offer the attentive the truly fascinating encounters.