Funny, the ones at my local petco make me feel the urge to buy them all, dump them in a pot and trn up the heat.

While I'm all for not sentencing these poor critters to a life of captivity I think that giving them a good home would be better than taking even the slightests risk of them spreading deseas to the wild. Heck, once the owners find out how mean they are they might be set loose anyways, but untill then lets try and keep money out of the turtle farmers pockets and deseases out of our waterways.

I agree with you - to a point (hate turtle soup myself).

I was really just kidding - would never release something like this into the wild - know what sort of chaos that can cause. Just felt sorry for them, as they were quite large & obviously overcrowded for their size. Although I would wonder what disease(s) they might have that native red-ears (we do have them here) wouldn't already have or been exposed to.

I'm surprised that you've found them/consider them "mean". I've never found them so - even adults - when I kept them. In fact, they were quite gentle & would carefully take food from my fingers without ever so much as grazing me.

There native to most of the US. Releasing them would do no harm.

You never know what they could have, could get some rare asian parasite, or some exotic african virus, or something as simple as a beefy strain of strep, Plus you know, when you rescue 6 it gives them enought money to breed 12 more to fill there spots. Turtles don't like me, They really do try and eat me, I work with a hog nosed soft shell (Undenyably a mean animal to all) that thing strikes like a snake, I can't stand that thing.