Happy tort encounter

[batchick]

Hi all, it has been a while since I posted. Things have been pleasantly uneventful with Ned (angulate who lives in our garden), apart from the other week when I was having a work meeting at home and left the lounge door open and he tried to saunter into the house. I guess he's been eying up the indoors through the glass door and figured it take the gap. Today I was out hacking back some of the plants that have gone into overdrive this spring, when suddenly here was a little nudge at my foot. Ned had wandered over and walked straight into my foot. I guess he was after all true fresh shrub cuttings (they were from some of his favorite plants and were the fresh young bits), but I'm going to take it as a sign, not of affection, but of OKness.

 

[Beck]

That's so cute! Is he a "wild" tortoise who has adopted you, or one you have free-roaming?

 

[Tom]

That is very cool. My aunt and uncle live in desert tortoise territory here and they have a couple of desert tortoises that behave similarly. This is not very common for a wild animal, so its pretty cool.

We'd love to see more pics. Most people here don't even know what an angulated tortoise looks like.

 

[wellington]

Yes, I second Toms request for pics. I don't believe I have ever seen one. Great story too. He sounds adorable.

 

[batchick]

Beck - He turned up outside our gate a couple of years ago and we took him in until we could find his owners, thinking he was someone's escaped tortoise. We never found them and suspect that he might be a wild even though we are a couple of kilometres from the mountain (there are enough green belt areas for him to be a wanderer). With no owners and having read up about the problems releasing tortoises back to the wild, we got him permitted and replanted a lot of our garden with indigenous vegetation for him.

About a year ago he started eating hibiscus from me (which came in handy when I had to grab him with his mouth open to give him parasite meds), but mostly he is left to his own devices.
Here's a link to a pic I posted before: http://tortoiseforum.org/newreply.php?tid=81927&processed=1 to give a sense of his size.
And attached is one from when he was shading himself in the nasturtiums

 

[BeeBee*BeeLeaves]

Hi all, it has been a while since I posted. Things have been pleasantly uneventful with Ned (angulate who lives in our garden ... I'm going to take it as a sign, not of affection, but of OKness.

Loved how you wrote about your happy tort encounter with Ned. He walked over to the food goddess who was simply weeding. He knows whose made it good for him.

The picture of Ned with "his" nasturtiums rocks! : )