A woman saved a turtle that was having a hard time crossing the street, but it wasn't until she got home that she discovered it had two heads.
Kathleen Talbot spotted turtle hatchlings crossing a street in Hudson, Maine, and as many animal-lovers would do, she stopped to make sure they crossed safely.
A tiny 24-hour-old snapper turtle that could fit in the palm of her hand was filthy and left behind. She brought the animal home to clean him off and take care of him, she tells Bangor Daily News.
"I thought he had two feet in the front. I thought he was deformed," Talbot tells WLBZ. "I didn't realize it was two heads until I got home and washed him. Then he came to life - and was just starving."
He appears to be doing well under Talbot's care, as he is eating with both heads now.
She named the two-headed turtle Frank and Stein, but she doesn't intend to keep him. She tells WLBZ, however, that she is planning on making sure he survives, although two-headed animals tend not to have a long life expectancy.
"Obviously it's a major deformity, to say the least," Derek Yorks, a state wildlife biologist in Maine tells Bangor Daily News. "So with that can come a whole host of complications - or not. It all depends of the luck of the draw. Under natural conditions, they rarely survive into adulthood, but there are a fair number of cases where people have found these two-headed turtles and kept them in captivity, and they've lived a long time."
