Yep, Eastern Painted. Anyway, I figured I'd add to the conversation by saying that it does look like a female. Adult males tend to have very long toenails on their front legs (nearly a centimeter in some cases) though that field mark is highly variable. My understanding is that the males use their toenails to "caress" the female's neck during courtship. Anyway, from this shot, I'm not seeing long toenails. Also, this is definitely the time of year when you would expect to find females traveling on land to lay their eggs which is probably what this gal was doing. Hard to say whether or not she had alreay laid them by the time you got to her but if she did I would expect the eggs to be safe from a pet dog though you never know.



Lastly, a more solid way to differentiate sex is by the tail. If you can grab onto the tail and stretch it out, the vent (cloaca) should extend past the posterior margin of the carapace if its a male and stop just short of it if it's a female. It kind of makes sense that it would stick farther out on males since they need to reach it down and around the female's shell when mating.

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