Painted Turtle

This is "Lucky" I saved her while she was trying to cross Tittabawassee Rd. in Saginaw, MI...for non locals, this road is pretty much a highway, and extremely dangerous. When I stopped to help her cross the street, once I picked her up I realized she was injured. I was to concerned with her well being to take a real before picture, but in the first photo I have listed for her, you will see I found a picture and edited it on paint to show you what her injury looked like. After cleaning out the wound, numbing it with oral gel, and placing it back together and applying her bandage, I released her two days later in the Shiawassee Flats, a game reserve located 20 miles from the road I picked her up from, but is protected and far away from cars.

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The painted turtle (Chrysemys picta) is the most widespread native turtle of North America. It lives in slow-moving fresh waters, from southern Canada to Louisiana and northern Mexico, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The turtle is the only species of the genus Chrysemys, which is part of the pond turtle family Emydidae.

The adult painted turtle female is 10–25 cm (4–10 in) long; the male is smaller. The turtle's top shell is dark and smooth, without a ridge. Its skin is olive to black with red, orange, or yellow stripes on its extremities. The subspecies can be distinguished by their shells: the eastern has straight-aligned top shell segments; the midland has a large gray mark on the bottom shell; the southern has a red line on the top shell; the western has a red pattern on the bottom shell.

The turtle eats aquatic vegetation, algae, and small water creatures including insects, crustaceans, and fish. Although they are frequently consumed as eggs or hatchlings by rodents, canines, and snakes, the adult turtles' hard shells protect them from most predators

Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Painted_turtle