You Have Got to be Kidding Me!!!

I got up this morning and got all of my kids ready for school feeling really good about my day. Our Big Boy tortoise came to the back door. He usually dang near breaks it down until I feed him something. Then he likes to crap right outside the door. You can only imagine what an 85 pound tortoise leaves behind. I really don't get it. He has almost two acres to roam and he picks my porch to do his business. This morning however he did not scratch. He just sat there, so I threw him some lettuce and finished getting my kids off to school. I went back outside and started to sweep off my porch. This was only one of the many things that I had on my list to do today. There was a horrendous smell that slapped me in the face as I walked outside. It was like I was sitting in the middle of the Elephant Display at the zoo. Right outside our door are two Ponds that have water turtles in them. I looked over and saw that one of the ponds had this grassy stuff floating in it and the water was really muddy looking. Then it hit me! That was Tortoise POOP! It did not take me long to figure out that our gigantic tortoise decided he would take a dip in the pond and relieve himself. SICK!!! Then I freaked out because I thought he had sunk to the bottom and couldn't get out. For a minute there I was really concerned for him. I grabbed a stick and started to move things around and realized that he was no longer swimming with the turtles. Then I got Pissed Off!! This was not on my list and I really didn't know how I was going to clean it out by myself. My mom is having hip surgery next week and is really limited to what she can do and no one else was home but Troy. If I wasn't so mad I probably would have sat down in the mud and cried. I took a few deep breaths and started bailing out 5 gallon bucket fulls at a time. It finally got light enough so I could lift it out and spray all of the CRAP off. I found a nice Black Widow with an egg sack and quite a few other insects while I was at it but that was nothing compared to cleaning up that poop. I spent the next hour trying to clean up around the area and figure out a way to Keep Him Out! We definitely have to do something. I am hoping to get a little more accomplished tomorrow.