Happy Post: Tiny Tortoises

[dizzojay]

Kathryn, a lady I work with, has two pet tortoises, George and Yoshi.  They have been in her family for years, Yoshi (the male) is approximately 55 years old, and she reckons George, the female is about 40.

Now George and Yoshi aren't shy about getting down to 'it' (the sheer mechanics of that act in tortoises still breaks my brain) and Kathryn has seen George lay eggs several times, although she's never had a successful outcome.

Until now...

George's latest clutch of five eggs, hatched about two weeks ago and produced a healthy clutch of four little hatchlings - one egg was a dud.

Now, I've never seen a teeny tiny baby tortoise before, but last Friday we all piled into Kathryn's car and went back to her house one lunchbreak to visit the little week-old babies ... and they were sooooo teeny-tiny!!

As the babies hatched, Kathryn had marked each one so that she'd be able to tell them apart, so at the moment their names are one, two, three and four.  As you can see, I was playing with one and four.

Just for scale - this is my hand that the little guys are sitting in.

Comments

[dizzojay.livejournal.com]

They are so tiny right now. Hard to know how big they'll get, but Mum is about 8 inches long and Dad is about 10 inches long, so probably around that sort of size I would imagine.

Tortoise rumpy pumpy is a very clumsy and awkward affair, but somehow they manage it, even though they're totally undersigned for it!