Quote:
Originally Posted by
Funky Feathers 
Ahhh, well that explains its nastiness! Little sucker is going outside tomorrow! I will not keep a mean animal.
That is good you are releasing it. Even if it wasn't a snapper, it is wrong to keep it captive nonetheless. It doesn't matter if young turtles have high wild mortality rates, it should stay wild.
Are you even prepared for the long term commitment of a turtle? They're actually much higher maintenance than people realize. A large enclosure (a 10 gallon tank, even a 55 gallon is NOT large considering how big turtles get), proper UV lighting, varied nutritional diet (none of those retarded turtle pellets), veterinary veterinary care (they're not throw away animals), and other things as well. It burns me up when people pluck a tiny turtle out of their yard and cram it in a cold fish tank with nary a thought to proper care.
And once a turtle has been kept a long time in captivity, you can't just release it when it becomes a nuisance, when the novelty wears off. They're accustomed to captive care, and can introduce new diseases into the wild population since they've been isolated from said population.
