Reptile & Amphibian Forums

We picked this turtle up in the middle of the road in Mobile, Albama several hundred feet from a stream. We would have just moved him out of the road, but something had taken a bite out of his shell just above his left rear leg. There was lots of blood, but we cleaned him up with antiseptic and it doesn't look too bad. But I need to know what he is in order to take care of him. The only ones I know anything about are the box turtles we have; and he is not a box turtle as he cannot close his shell. He is very shy so I don't have a head shot of him, but he does not have any visible markings on his head and it is dark brown. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

That is an old male slider (Trachemys scripta). Turtles are remarkably tough; if you don't want to keep him as a lifelong pet, you should probably just return him to his home. He'll be fine.

Thanks so much for the information!

yeah, it's amazing the sorts of heeled injuries you can find on reptiles, in particular turtles. Turtles that get run over by lawn mowers can look pretty gnarly but somehow often survive. I've seen wood turtles missing two legs which were probably chewed off by an otter that still manage to get around and a while back there was a bit in the back of a reptiles magazine about a diamond-backed terrapin that was found who had been hit by a mower blade head on. The carapace and plastron had a huge gash in the front, it's jaw looked like it had been broken, and the gash went straight through one of its eyes but it had made a recovery! I recently found as musk turtle shell that had 5 shotgun pellet holes in the carapace and the bones and tissue looked to have grown around the wounds! Tough little buggers. It almost makes me ashamed to be a mammal...

I agree that if you let it go it should survive.