In Which a Gopher Tortiose Comes to Stay

It was an ordinary evening. I was fixing dinner, and ds said he'd be out front riding his scooter. Seconds later he came running inside shouting something that included the words "turtle" and "driveway". Dh and I went out to see what he was talking about. The neighbors were already there.

Sure enough, there was a Gopher Tortoise in our driveway. We watched it walk across our front yard and stop at our elderly neighbor's gate. The neighbor opened his gate to allow it into his yard. Excitement over. Back to dinner. Well, no. Later that evening, it dug under the fence and came into our yard. Within a day, it had a burrow in our yard. Ds, the nature boy, was beside himself.

The Gopher Tortoise is listed as threatened in some states; endangered in others. In Florida it's a Species of Special Concern. Habitat loss due to development is the greatest threat to the future of this species. It's illegal to move one, other than to get it out of immediate danger (such as if one is in the middle of a road). So, we have a new back yard resident. Occasionally we see him in the yard eating weeds. As I prepare for our fall garden (the best time for gardening in Central Florida), I need to keep him in mind. As much as we love having him live here, I don't want him eating our vegetables.

I took some video and pictures when he first showed up in our front yard, and took pictures in the back yard a few days later. So here he is, Gopherus polyphemus, aka Tortera.