Anyway he/they have a surprisingly loud voice, and during spring nights their croaking can be heard even from inside the house, with closed windows!
In a few days they are gone again, and you can occasionally meet one of them in summer nights, especially rainy, when they stroll around the garden. They do not fear humans, and can be touched, just washing your hands after this.
One of them is especially fond of lurking under a garden light, probably because the lamp attracts insects that he can eat: we call him "Edison" because of the bulb, and he is a friend of ours!
There is a longer story to tell about this, because we also tried to take some eggs into our house, and followed the whole development from egg to tadpole to toad. It is illustrated in the following page: a very interesting experience!
But this one is a "wild" one, found in the grass, almost invisible if you are standing!
Here she is sunbathing on the low vegetation near the old pond: a small noise, a movement of any type, and she would throw herself in the water with a loud "splash"!!! As you can see, she is a red-eared slider (Chrisemis picta).
There must be a reason for this shyness: if she could talk, she would probably tell a strange story! In fact we did not buy her in a pet store, but actually found her in the garden of the parents of V.!!! Where of course there is no water at all, and where she could not walk alone (due to a fence)!
Our guess is that someone must have tried to get rid of this lovable animal... and we deduce that she must have conducted a very sad life before meeting us, with rare interaction with humans; hence, this fear and shyness.
We bought at a pet store two young red-eared sliders, like her, a male and a female, and with all possible precautions introduced them in the pond. During at least two week all of them were barely visible, and escaped any contact with us.
Then, voila! When they began again to show, we understand the "drama" that must have taken place under the water: the new young male had "married" Pacifica, a beatiful lady (we named him ... Pacifico); and the young female was left alone, and even despised by what we call now "The Real Couple". We named her Candelina (small candle).
Candelina, shown in this photograph, is the sweetest of all three, and, possibly because of her loneliness, interacts eagerly and often with us. We love her a lot!
