Trachemys scripta elegans
(Wied 1838)
St. Louis Co., Missouri. Summer of 1972.
Behold the mighty Red-ear! Dime-store turtle, denizen of the plastic death bowl (complete with palm tree) and colonizer of foreign waters. Tough and adaptable, and cute as a button just out of the egg. My first Red-ear was a neonate, found in the small creek just a few hundred feet from my house in suburban Lemay, Missouri. Since then I’ve seen them everywhere; the clean, cold waters of the Current River, the muddy, sludgy lower Meramec, storm sewers, parks, farm ponds, roadside ditches, and crossing roads far from water. The top Red-ear pictured here was observed in Lumphini Park, Bangkok, Thailand, and the bottom is from southern Illinois.
My Flickr album for this species is here.
HerpMapper records for this species are here.
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