In 1992 the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were at the height of their popularity and like many young boys of my generation, I was obsessed! To the point where my vast toy collection wasn’t enough. I wanted a real turtle, and shockingly enough my mother obliged me. He was a red-eared slider (Trachemys scripta elegans), a sub-species of the pond slider native to the mid-western United States, around the Mississippi River and its tributaries.
