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I live in central NJ. Today we went outside and found our cat and kitten playing with a scared painted turtle in the yard. I only have experience with RES, but if painteds are anything similar, this appears to be a female (short front nails) - carapace length ~5". She does look quite healthy though.

Painted / RES are not native to this area, but have been introduced several years ago. However, they do survive just fine in this climate. She is not as shy as I'd have expected for a wild turtle, but she doesn't appear to be a recently dropped off pet since her shell is pretty dirty.

Our yard where we found her is at least 100' from the creek that runs behind the house, so I'm assuming she has recently laid eggs or is gravid and looking for a suitable place. How far do painteds typically stray from water to lay eggs in the "wild"?

My question is, what is the best place to release her? Directly behind our house, the creek has quite steep banks and is not very deep. However where it runs behind the farm next door the creek is much wider, with much softer sloped banks. I feel like that would be a better local habitat for her. I'd love to keep her; she's very pretty - but I just don't have a tank large enough to keep her happy at the moment. And I'm certainly not prepared to provide her with a place to lay eggs right now.

I found a painted the other day while mowing my front lawn. I love their look. My wife said unless I can put it with my 2 RES that I needed to put it back behind our house. Knowing turtles are aggressive to each other I dropped it off in a marsh behind our house. Based on the distance and the hill this turtle must have traveled for days if that's where it originally came from.

IMO no matter where you let it go it will find the most suitable place by itself. Hope you are able to release it and it finds a nice home.

Have you seen any wild painteds by the creek? I would probably release where I know they are thriving.

Why would you say a painted isnt native to your state. Basically every east coast state has painteds native to it.

How far will females travel to lay eggs? Far VERY FAR! ive seen painted lay eggs so far from pond i wonder how they expect the babies to find the pond. I tried to find a pic on another forum that showed how far one had gone from a pond. Maybe 200yards or more. So easily painted could of come from that creak. I just release back there or other place you described.

unless theres a law against it, and if you are obligated in another turtle, I'd keep it.