Tuesday Tails: Tort Report, out of hibernation

Last year's Photo.
The littlest two, Milagro and Dusty, went out in the garden
the day before their parents and adult sibling, Lucky.

As you can see, the disparity in their size is growing every year.
I am starting to fear for Dusty, who should be the same size as Milagro.

The three Adult Torts, who sleep in their climate controlled boxes in the garage, got a good soaking, and a weigh-in, and they are now eating all their favorite weeds in the Back Garden.

This is Mamma, Poko Ono, yesterday.  She weighed in at a nice 11.25 pounds.

She is a Gopherus morafkai

And here is the Pappa, Churchy, who weighed in a lot lighter.  He's 64 years old. He is a Gopherus   Agassizii and weighed in at  10 pounds 5/8th

Churchy, yesterday

And here's their oldest Son, Lucky. He is a hybrid of the two species.  He now weighs 10 pounds.  I expect that he'll be a fifteen pound tortoise one day.  He was the size of half a walnut shell when he was found, and he was kicking his tiny legs to try to turn himself upright in the Geranium pot.

Lucky, yesterday

I call him Lucky because he was the lucky tiny tort that got dropped into a flower pot, surviving the fall from the sky, and saved from being eaten by a crow.  We must have lost a lot of these babies before we even realized they were out there.

Then we went on to find more, and then some more, and yet a few more of these itty bitty tots.
Fast forward three years, and we found out the hard way that some cannot survive the first hibernation without "snack Breaks".  But Lucky did, and his brother Milagro (the newest Milagro is his name sake.)

But the two torts that I gave to my faceting instructor are alive and well, also.  So Lucky has some other siblings out there in the world (other than those pesky teenagers, Milagro and Dusty).
Lucky, who will not have the challenges that poor Churchy had, is the same size as his Pappa already. Churchy was not fed properly for decades.  I didn't have him at that time, and, despite his constant dueling with his son, he is a charming fellow.  He likes to sneak up and bite toes, especially if the nails are painted red.

Mother and Child

Here is a page that explains the division in the tortoise species

And here's a San Diego Zoo site that will tell ALL you'd ever want to know about these amazing little animals.

And so, that is the full Tort Report for now.

Piffff on Politics! It's a bloody tug of war!  Hang on to your hats, my fellow Free thinking Americans.