Herpetofauna - One Life's List

Redeared Slider
Trachemys scripta elegans

Current River near Eminence, Missouri.  June 1972
 

Behold the mighty Red-Ear!  Dime-store turtle and colonizer of foreign waters.  Tough and adaptable, cute as a button just hatched.  I've seen them everywhere; the clean, cold waters of the Current River, the muddy, sludgy lower Meramec, storm sewers, roadside ditches, roads far from water.  In my youth I kept them in plastic 'kiddie pools' for a number of years.

Far too numerous in captivity and other places they shouldn't be, I prefer to see them on a log somewhere, basking in the sun over some river.  I've seen them along the Rio Grande in south Texas, and their shells are very beautiful there.

 
Return to Life List Index                    Return to Mike's Page