Peek-a-boo!

[Yvonne G]

I have an adult male desert tortoise in a small quarantine pen while he waits to be adopted. There used to be a mimosa tree shading the pen, but it became infested with some sort of sap sucking bug that came back to the tree every year. You couldn't walk under the tree without getting sticky on your shoes and in your hair, so I had the tree cut down. So now the hiding place in the pen is right out in the open. I've covered it with a couple boards to offer a little shade, and it helps a bit.

So this a.m. I noticed a whole bunch of dirt at the mouth of the hiding place. I figured the tortoise was digging a burrow:



Then I went around to the back of the hiding place and here's what was looking back at me:



That's an awful lot of dirt for just going in a straight line forward!

 

[tortadise]

Man they sure are exceptional excavators. Dirt flickers extraordinaires is what they should be called.

 

[Yvonne G]

They dig with such ease. The dirt here is red clay. It's cement when dry and quick sand when wet.

 

[tortadise]

That probably helps a lot too. It's black clay here. Very expansive. So wet it's super sticky, and dry it's very hard but not as dense. It's still hilarious seeing them flick dirt behind there backs. Same with the gopher tortoises in Florida and Georgia. They crack me up.

 

[dmmj]

One thing I can't figure out ( serious question), where does the dirt go? I see them dig massive burrows sometimes, yet no corresponding pile of dirt elsewhere. Where does it go?

 

[Yvonne G]

Well, in this particular case, it's getting piled up at the mouth of the burrow. Eventually, as the tortoise goes in and out, walking over the mound, it gets compressed so it doesn't look like much, but it makes a bit of a mound so when it rains the burrow doesn't flood.

 

[pam]

Cute picture