meet the newest member of our gang....FLASH

So after Trey's tooth fell out, he decided that he wanted to buy a pet turtle. I almost took him to the pet store "just to look"...but decided that I better do a little research first so I know what I would be getting us into. I found out that the Desert Museum has a tortoise adoption program and I thought that would be kind of cool. So I called, and the lady told me what we needed to do to our yard to be able to "adopt" one of their turtles...it was REALLY overwhelming but she told me that once we got the yard all set up, it would be a really easy pet to maintain. So, I immediately got to work.....I had no idea at that time how hard of a project this would turn out to be....Javi just kept asking me "who's idea was this?" After you get the yard all set up, you call them out to do a "yard inspection" and you have to pass in order to be able to go get a tortoise.

we had to create an enclosure to keep the turtle out of the pool and our dog away from it. The area had to be 120 sq feet (ours ended up 90 sq feet). The enclosure had to have an area of grass (so the tortoise could graze and eat) so we had to lay sod....

The enclosure also had to have a specific burrow. They gave us 2 options and we chose the half trash can one. We had to cut a 20 gallon galvanized trash can in half and cover it with at least 8"of dirt for insulation from the heat and the cold.

Here it is after just 2 trips into the desert with my wheel barrow to "borrow" some dirt. It ended up taking me 5 trips and boy was that a workout! Not to mention, I'm sure I looked like a complete idiot to my neighbors!

Then we had to create a wall that had to be buried at least 8" b/c they can dig pretty deep I am told.

while Javi and I were working on burying the wall the boys were playing "dress up"

Talan likes to help water the grass

So here is the finished wall...which isn't buried 8" b/c we ran into roots of both trees and the irrigation line while we were digging. No project of ours goes without complications....

I was waiting for the lady I talked to from the desert museum to get back in town so she could come do our yard inspection. I was really nervous about the bricks not being deep enough and failing the inspection and feeling like we had done all of this work for nothing. I had a patient who knew I was looking to adopt a desert tortoise and she called yesterday to let me know that her partner had one and I could come Thursday and pick it up. I really liked the idea of being able to take Trey to the desert museum for him to pick out his tortoise but I was still really worried about the whole inspection thing...so we decided to just get the "for sure thing" tortoise.


The boys and us had already come up with the name Flash (thanks to Jody and Andy trying to find a name for their new little puppy) but today when I picked Flash up, I was informed that she is a female tortoise ( somewhere between 30-50 years old...they live to be 80-100) and she has been in this mans backyard with a male tortoise that was "very happy this spring" so she might have eggs inside of her.....NICE!!! What have I gotten us into?!?

Above is Trey seeing her for the first time....she was still a little scared from the car ride home in a box so she was kinda pulled into her shell, Trey said "this is my turtle? Where is it's head?"

Trey was SOOOO excited about his new pet! I couldn't keep him inside the house. Zoe wasn't real sure and she was going nuts around it!

I took this picture from the kitchen window while I came inside to make dinner.

Flash immediately opened up and walked all over her "desert resort" she wasn't scared of the boys at all...her favorite thing to do was climb up one side of the buried burrow and slide down the other side...she did it over and over again! It was really cute to watch her!

Trey loves to pick her up!

She would go all over the whole area but wouldn't go inside the burrow we built for her....then when it got dark, Trey went outside with the flashlight to check on her and she was sleeping inside the burrow! I guess she does like it....all of our hard work seems to have paid off...now lets just pray that she doesn't dig her way out of her little resort!