We Have Babies

A couple of weeks ago Dave had to come home early from church to do the irrigation. When I got home he left right away to go home teaching. I was in my kitchen cleaning things up and trying to make dinner. Sitting on my counter was an empty trash bag box. I'll admit that I was a little irritated that Dave would leave it on the counter for me to throw away. When I went to pick it up I felt something move. I jumped and then screamed. It was a baby tortoise. Dave forgot to mention this tiny little detail to me before he left. We all went out to search for more babies. We were on a tortoise hunt. It is a huge yard and there are plenty of places for them to hide, not to mention that most of the yard was under water. The one that Dave had found was riding a wave of irrigation that came into the yard through the pipe. We found fifteen more out in the yard and a little later a neighbor girl two houses down came bringing one that had traveled through the irrigation into her yard. That made a total of 17 babies. We spent the next few days hunting for more babies but we didn't find any more. We read about it and learned that the momma spends about five hours digging a hole to lay her eggs in. Then she spends another few hours covering them up. After 8 months, they hatch and somehow dig their way out. It really is quite a miracle, just like everything else that is born or hatched.


I feel kind of bad because there are so many of these babies out there and because they get so big, a lot of people end up not wanting them. We have several large tortoises and we really tried to keep the male away from the females. Obviously we didn't try hard enough because now we have all of these babies that are going to grow to be at least a hundred pounds. We will have to try to sell them so if anyone wants one, do let me know. I have to say that I think they are so cute and you can already tell the ones that have spunky personalities and the ones that are shy and docile.

This is the "Big Daddy"