cooter.now Open 24 hrs · Fresh cooter

Bait · Tackle · Live cooter · Open late

I need to see that cooter.

Well, come on in. Here is a cooter. Right now. No sign-up, no waiting, and nobody's gonna ask you why.

Time since you last seen a cooter 00:00:00

Pseudemys spp. · Family Emydidae · Served fresh · Press space whenever the need takes you

Cooter

0
Cooters shown today · no limit
Cooter heat index
Currently Sticky · it is always humid here

God I love cooter.

Sworn statements from folks who needed to see a cooter, saw one, and wanted it on the record.

Statement 0417Sworn
I drove four hours to see that cooter and I'd do it again tomorrow.
Earl, Dothan, Alabama
Statement 0422Sworn
My wife caught me looking at cooter. I showed her. Now she's looking at cooter too.
Travis, Waycross, Georgia
Statement 0431Sworn
Prettiest cooter I ever laid eyes on. Took a picture and sent it to my pastor.
Darlene, Thibodaux, Louisiana
Statement 0438Notarised
Found this site at two in the morning. Have not slept. There is just so much cooter.
Name withheld, Biloxi, Mississippi
Statement 0440Sworn
Mama said don't go looking at cooter on the internet. Mama was wrong.
Cody, 19, Tuscaloosa
Statement 0441Sworn
God I love cooter.
Dale, boat ramp, Lake Seminole, Georgia

Things you ought to know about cooter.

Every word of this is true. That is the part folks find hardest to accept.

  1. It is a turtle. Cooters are the genus Pseudemys: big freshwater turtles of the rivers, lakes and springs of the Deep South and up the East Coast.
  2. The name came over from West Africa. "Cooter" most likely descends from kuta, the word for turtle in Bambara and Malinké, carried to the Carolinas and Georgia by enslaved people and kept ever since.
  3. Pseudemys means "false turtle". Which is a slander. It is an entirely real turtle.
  4. People ate them. Cooter stew is a real Lowcountry dish and the Gullah Geechee kept both the word and the recipe. We do not endorse it. Look, don't cook.
  5. Grown cooters are mostly vegetarian. An adult river cooter will put away a frankly alarming amount of pondweed.
  6. Hot cooter on a log. On a good log, cooters climb right on top of each other to reach the sun. Nobody minds.
  7. Some lay eggs in gator nests. Florida red-bellied cooters will nest in the mound an alligator built, and the gator guards the lot without meaning to.
  8. One is a state reptile. The Alabama red-bellied cooter is Alabama's official reptile and is federally endangered. Seeing one is a privilege. Act like it.
  9. The shell is the skeleton. A cooter cannot leave its shell; the shell is its ribcage and spine. It is not hiding in there. It lives there.
  10. They're in it for the long haul. A cooter can live past forty. Plenty of them have seen more summers than you.

Wear the cooter.

Shirts for people who love cooter and are plumb worn out explaining it.

See all the shirts

About this establishment. cooter.now exists because sometimes a person simply needs to see a cooter, and there is no good reason on God's green earth they should have to wait. Every photograph is a genuine cooter, taken by a real person who was standing near it, credited on the credits page.

Bless your heart. What did you think it was?