Paul Solie saw her in the Village of Grantsburg treatment ponds the other day and knew Gameras was back.

"She was riding pretty low in the water, but I saw some orange paint and I knew it was her," he said affectionately.

Yet again, Gameras made her way back from the St. Croix River where Solie, an employee on the village crew, had dumped her in early June.

Solie and Gameras have had on-going contact for quite some time as Solie believes the first time he saw the turtle was about 10 years ago. “It started when I saw a big snapping turtle out at the sewage treatment plant in one of the ponds,” Solie explained.

He eventually caught the snapper, hauled it to the Wood River which flows through the village campground, and dumped it, hoping to get rid of it.

Time goes by and he sees another snapper at the treatment plant, dumps that one in the river as well, but that wasn't the end of it.

“It wasn’t a matter of but a few days when I see another snapping turtle up on the rocks and I’m going ‘Now wait a minute, this looks like the same one,’” Solie said with a laugh.

Thinking it was the same snapper returning time after time, Solie paints the turtle orange, who by now had earned the name Gameras, after the flying turtle of Japanese folklore, and dumps it again in the Wood River.

There's also the time Solie captured the turtle, took her and dumped her in the St. Croix River, and an hour later he sees the same orange-hued turtle sunning itself at the treatment plant. That incident only reinforced the turtle's lore.

"There's no way she could have made it by herself," fellow employee Curtis Anderson noted. "She had to have had help."

These sightings and captures have taken place over the last four or five years.

The latest Gameras sighting, however, may signal an end to the Solie-Gameras saga as he said he was through trying to transplant a turtle who obviously considers Grantsburg home.