Mountain skinks are one of the most beautiful members of the genus.
At an adult length of 6 to 7 inches, the beautiful mountain skink, Plestiodon callicephalus, is a denizen of habitats that vary from rocky desert to wooded slopes. Those that I have seen have been along the rocky banks of seasonal creeks, and with just a little effort on the part of the searcher, the rocky banks of one spring-fed water trough could always be depended on to harbor at least one of these skinks.

This taxon has a light “Y” shaped marking on the top of the head, a fawn dorsum, and a broad dark stripe on each side. The stripe narrows posteriorly and fades entirely a few scale rows posterior to the hind limbs.

Like many skinks, the mountain species has a brilliant blue tail when young. Unlike many other skink species that lose the blue with growth and age, the mountain skink retains the blue throughout its life but the intensity dulls some with age.

Primarily a Mexican species, in the USA the mountain skink occurs only in extreme scAZ and the western bootheel of NM. From there it ranges southward to the vicinity of Guadalajara, MX.

Albino red-eared sliders are now readily available in the pet trade.
The beautiful and ever popular red-eared slider, Trachemys scripta elegans, may be the most successful reptilian invader known to the world.

When I was a kid, red-eared slider hatchlings, then sold as “baby green turtles”, were available in just about every 5 and dime and pet store in the nation. Like kids in untold numbers of other households I was a keeper of these pretty chelonians. In those early days of herp-keeping-non-knowledge such inappropriate foods as dried ant pupae and caging such as plastic turtle bowls complete with an insertable plastic palm tree were the rage. And I never heard a single salesperson explain that when adult these turtles ranged from 6 to 12 inches in carapace length (try and keep those in the old style turtle bowls!), that they (like most turtles) were messy eaters, and that maintaining clean facilities was a necessary and almost daily job. The need for vitamins/calcium/full spectrum lighting was virtually unknown. It is small wonder that the majority of these turtles died. It was equally understandable why, if just by accident the red-ears happened to survive and grow, they either escaped or were eventually loosed in the nearest body of water.

Despite a regulation passed in 1975 a regulation that made it illegal to sell or barter chelonian eggs or turtles having a carapace length of less than 4” domestically except for scientific purposes turtles continued (often surreptitiously) to be sold (I was surprised to learn how many 5 and 10 year old scientists we had in this country). And thousands more continued to be exported.

Somewhere along the line feral populations of red-ears began to show up in odd places—New England, the Pacific Coastal region, the desert southwest, France, Asia, Brazil…

It seems that at least some, and from the looks of things, probably many, of the escaped and released red-ears have survived and are breeding.

Check out these statistics from the Global Invasive Species Database that document this turtle now being established in Asia, Australia, Austria, The Bahamas, Bahrain, Belgium, Bermuda, Brazil, British Virgin Islands, Cambodia, Canada, Cayman Islands, Chile, China, Costa Rica, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Europe, Finland, France, French Polynesia, Germany, Gibraltar, Guadeloupe, Guam, Guyana, Hong Kong, Hungary, Indonesia, Israel, Italy, Japan, Korea, Democratic People's Republic of, Korea, Republic of, Latvia, Lithuania, Malaysia, Martinique, Micronesia, Federated States of, New Caledonia, New Zealand, Northern Mariana Islands, Panama, Philippines, Poland, Puerto Rico, Reunion, Saint Lucia, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Trinidad and Tobago, United Kingdom, and Viet Nam.

Statistics such as this help undermine our hobby!