ALBANY, N.Y. -- The Pascarell family is no stranger to unique animals. But to their six dogs, three cats, four horses, 11 fish and one hamster, add the strangest pet yet: a tiny two-headed turtle.

The terrapin was found by Gabrielle, 9, one of three children of Rob and Rebecca Pascarell. The family lives in a sprawling country house on six acres that include a one-acre pond. It was on the pond's edge, home to a duck and family of geese and goslings, that Gabrielle found the quarter-size painted turtle Sunday afternoon.

She thought it was a cool-looking rock. Then the heads moved.

"It's so cute," said Rebecca Pascarell. "We can't call it a 'he' or a 'she' because we don't know what it is."

The reptile now lives in a 25-gallon fish tank filled with gravel, water and a plastic plant. It -- or they, depending on your point of view -- appears healthy as it wanders around its new home.

The right head seems to be the more dominant, the family said, but both heads move independently. Sometimes they look in different directions.

"I think it's pretty weird," Rob Pascarell said.

This is a family that already owns a one-eyed horse and a Papillon dog with a tongue so long it puts Gene Simmons of the rock band Kiss to shame.

Ward Stone, a state wildlife pathologist, said he's never seen a live two-headed animal in his 34 years with the Department of Environmental Conservation.

The mutation is not likely due to man-made chemicals, as one might assume. The pond the turtle came from is fed by three springs. The cause of such oddities can range from a chemical imbalance to drastic temperature changes before the egg hatches, Stone said.

The Science Museum of Minnesota kept a two-headed snapping turtle for four years until it died -- one head a day before the other -- in 1977. And last September, a Naples, Fla., resident who was monitoring sea turtles found a just-hatched two-headed turtle on the beach. She quickly released it to the ocean.

Little Bud, a Holstein calf born on Christmas Eve with two faces but just a single head, drew herds of curious onlookers to Bly Hollow Farm in Berlin, 20 miles east of Albany.

In the wild, two-headed animals are not likely to live long, Stone said. In this case, two heads aren't better than one -- the two skulls will slow down the turtle, causing indecision and perhaps even cause the animal to get stuck, making it a likely target for predators. Also, its -- their -- heads don't fit into the shell.

"It isn't that weird once you've seen him for a while," said Dominique Pascarell, 7.