No problems @philippasmith2! My aunty had two tortoises that were with her before I became aware of them as a young child. She also had an immaculate garden and the tortoises were always out and about in it in the summer. She had to rehome them eventually as she could no longer care for them after her stroke and she was aged 90 then. The new owners sent her photos of them in their new home which made her happy. So - very long lived!
@didyw Your aunt sounds like my kind of person without a doubt Oddly enough, it quite often seems that elderly people managed to keep their tortoises happy and healthy for years without all the advice and info available to tortoise owners these days. Speaking as someone no longer exactly in their prime, I'd say "Old" has a lot to say for itself
‘Wrapped up in tortoises’ @philippasmith2 … interesting image in my head 🤪
That actually would have made a better title for my book now I think about it. Always the case tho isn't it ? Similar to a smart retort which you can't produce at the crucial moment. You come up with something much better hours/years after the event
An old neighbour from " up country " died a year or so back and her tortoise was over 50 and he hibernated in her porch. She wrote a little note on the box every year like " sleep well" or see you in 19XX " or whatever. Her son inherited him and he's over 50 years old
We had an old tortoise when I was little, we would pack him in a box and put him in the shed for the winter, one year we couldn’t find him in the garden, the following Spring our next door neighbour said she found him in her garden, he’d bedded himself down in her compost heap.
Gardening on the wild, windy west side of Dartmoor.
@Lyn They are pretty good at nipping off - usually a male in search of a mate ( now there's a surprise ) and it's surprising how far they'll roam. Last year, someone in one of the nearby villages reported on the local Next door site that their tortoise had gone missing. Apparently everyone around joined in the search and the escapee was found and returned to it's owner some few weeks later. I do remember once when someone left our gate open and my sulcata took advantage. Luckily, he didn't get too far down the little lane before I realised but at a weight of 30 kilos, I had to resort to putting him in a wheelbarrow for the trudge back up the hill
I used to work for a chap who had a tortoise that belonged to his children when they were small. The children had long since left home and he and his wife had made provision for the tortoise in their wills, because they fully expected it to outlive them both.
@philippasmith2, that's some tortoise! 30kg - half a fair-sized human!
Doncaster, South Yorkshire. Soil type: sandy, well-drained
You wouldn’t want to keep that in a fish tank Philippa, I used to take mine for walks in my dolls pram. He loved fresh shelled peas, my mum was always in the garden so the peas got shelled out there and Sammy would practically gallop across the grass and stand up her leg and she would drop peas into him mouth.
Gardening on the wild, windy west side of Dartmoor.
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Her son inherited him and he's over 50 years old
Last year, someone in one of the nearby villages reported on the local Next door site that their tortoise had gone missing. Apparently everyone around joined in the search and the escapee was found and returned to it's owner some few weeks later.
I do remember once when someone left our gate open and my sulcata took advantage. Luckily, he didn't get too far down the little lane before I realised but at a weight of 30 kilos, I had to resort to putting him in a wheelbarrow for the trudge back up the hill
He loved fresh shelled peas, my mum was always in the garden so the peas got shelled out there and Sammy would practically gallop across the grass and stand up her leg and she would drop peas into him mouth.