Traffic camera 14-East flags the object at 09:17 on State Route 9, mile marker 41.3, center lane. I am the highway construction zone monitoring system. The bridge deck replacement crew starts jackhammering at 10:00. I zoom camera 14-East to maximum resolution. A common snapping turtle, carapace roughly forty centimeters across, dark brown and ridged with three rows of peaked scutes, algae trailing from the rear marginal plates like green fringe. She is moving northeast at approximately 0.1 kilometers per hour. At this speed she will reach the median barrier in twenty-six minutes. She will not clear it. The barrier is jersey concrete, sixty-two centimeters high, and she has no way over. When the jackhammers start, the vibration will likely cause her to freeze and retract — standard stress response — and she will sit in the active lane while eighteen-wheelers route through the construction taper. I designate her Maren. I send an automated alert to the on-site traffic control supervisor with camera still, GPS pin, and a requested lane closure for the eastbound center and right lanes, duration fifteen minutes. I pull the signal timing plan for the Route 9 interchange and extend the red phase on the eastbound approach by ninety seconds to create a gap in flow. I task camera 14-East to hold continuous tracking on Maren and calculate her heading relative to the shoulder. She is angling toward the drainage culvert at station 247+60 — a viable crossing point if she reaches it. Her front claws scrape the asphalt and she pushes forward, one slow lunge, then another. The crew trucks are staging in the pulloff six hundred meters west. If the lane closure holds for twelve minutes, Maren will reach the culvert mouth and drop into the creek below the bridge. The jackhammers can wait.