Turtle Thursday: Profile

This is Randall. He's an adult male red belly cooter. Cooters are in the slider family and can breed with any others in the family. Randall was purchased in a pet shop in Flushing, Queens when he was only a hatchling. They had a tank with cooters and soft shells. My wife wanted a cooter so she looked into the tank. One swam up to the top and looked her in the eye.

"I want that one!" she told the clerk. He looked like half a ping-pong ball painted bright orange. A couple weeks later we went back because I decided I wanted to try my luck at raising a soft shell turtle but the tank was empty. The clerk said all of the turtles became sick and died. We reckon that Randall might be the only survivor from that herd.

That was about nine or ten years ago. Now Randall is the size of a football, being the largest male turtle we have, possibly largest of all the herd, even 13 year old female Snappy! Despite his huge size, he's very gentle and enjoys the company of humans of turtles alike. He's a good guy even though he passes gas as loud as a human.