Caring for a red eared slider (terrapin) that fell from a height
Our red eared slider (RES) fell down from slightly above table height, not sure when she fell exactly, might have been a few hours ago. There's a small crack on her bottom shell near where the tail is and she bled quite a bit. She was sitting in a puddle of blood when we found her, but has stopped bleeding now. She can walk fine, is acting normally and doesn't try to bite us when we touch her or anything.
We wanted to bring her to a vet, but we can't find a vet open for reptiles near us at this time. We hope to bring her to one tomorrow.
We put her back in her tank, is it safe to do so though? She's sitting in her tank now and looks fine, doesn't seem bothered by the water or anything.
Edit : We put her outside of the tank for about 6 hours, she mostly sat there and slept, but it seems like she still bled a bit. We put her back in the tank and she's still bleeding there. She had stopped bleeding earlier but seems to have started bleeding again.
Edit 2 : I managed to find a 24 hour vet hotline but they had no vets available that could deal with turtles at the time, the vet did call us and suggested using super glue to seal the crack though.
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I am sad to hear she had passed away.
You have done the right in consulting the vet as fast as possible.
If a turtle (or other animals) fall from high the pressure is short time very high in the body. Like a ball the body is pushed together by hitting the ground. Because of this the possibility of inner hurting (for example bursting of liquide filled organs) is very high. One could never see this from the outside, so one have to bring them to the vet quickly, who could make images from the inside of body with various methods like x-ray and other.
If you could imagine to have some time in the future another turtle, you could give a lost animal a new home and looking in a shelter for it. It is a question of area, but in a lots of shelters they have a lots of RES turtles who would be happy to get a real home.
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