House guest

When we bought this house it came with a few extras: a basketball hoop, some outdoor furniture, kitchen stools, a few house plants.... and a tortoise.  The final "extra" was only discovered last weekend when Patrick, using his newly-aquired-garage-sale-find leaf blower, found hi
m covered in leaves behind our trash can.  He stuck his little head out and didn't mind at all when I picked him up so he pretty obviously was a pet not a wild wanderer.  What is incredible to me is that he must have been living on his own devices for at least a year!  Given his location of origin we named him Oscar.

We moved Oscar to the other side of the yard because we had weeded and feeded the grass (bad for tortoises) and I proceeded to research what exactly you do with what I assumed was a desert tortoise.  We built him a little burrow per online instructions and blocked off access to the pool (after we discovered him behind the pool pump and realized he was more nimble and able to get through small fence places than we had thought).  That night was Evie's party and it just so happened that one of the dad's is the reptile curator for the Desert Sonoran Museum (how cool is that!)  He examined our little friend and informed us that this was not a sonoran desert tortise but a sulcata tortise who: 1) come from the Sahel 2) live to be about 150 3) is a 3ish year old boy and 4) will double in size each year until he is about the size of our fire pit and weighs around 200 pounds!  So it appears that we have a new pet who will outlive us and likely eventually out eat us.  (On the bright side once he is big we can move him to the grassy side and may never need to mow again)

His new local was pretty sparse so yesterday I took a spring break day with Evie and we went out to Desert Survivors to pick up some habitat and food for the guy.  We came home with 5 different native grasses, mallow, desert hibiscus, prickly pear, and other "goodies" to plant and see what he prefers.  Now I just have to hope that he doesn't eat all of his habitat before it has a chance to grow in!