Turtle Tchotchke Tuesday

Tchotchkie has a new home!

We had gotten him a Tortoise House when he first move in. Tortoises need to have sunshine so they need to live outside. The Tortoise House can stay outside and is big enough according to the reptile store person. But it just felt too tiny for me. Besides, tortoises like to dig.

So I built him a pen to live in. It is a redwood box that is intended to be a raised bed garden. It's four feet by eight feet.

Here's the nearly finished product. It has the Tortoise House in it so he has a dark, secluded place to hide.

Tchotchkie's at the far end of the pen.

The mesh in the lid was meant to be the gopher barrier at the bottom of the raised bed. I wanted a lid to make sure Tchotchkie doesn't escape and to keep predators out. So I built a frame to hold the mesh and attached it to the box with hinges and hasps. I hope it is indeed secure enough to keep this master of escape from escaping.

Here's a closer picture of him.

 Closer yet.

Since tortoises like to dig and they're masters of escape, I needed to make sure he couldn't burrow out of the pen. I dug a hole where I was going to put the pen.

Then I set the box over the hole. I used old chunks of concrete and concrete paver stones as supports.

I then lined the hole with hardware cloth and attached it to the box.

Then put the dirt back into the hole. Since the box is a little above the original ground level, I had to haul dirt from other parts of the yard to fill it.

Then, all I had to do was attach the lid and add a tortoise. Then we're up to the first picture above.

It still needs landscaping. I need to get things growing in there that he'll like to nibble on. Grass would be a good start.

I hope he digs his new digs and digs in it.

I hope it is escape proof.