We made a planter box!

Okay, maybe this is a little silly, but I had to share. This weekend hubby and I managed to construct a planter box with a ramp for Bruce (our baby tortoise). I'm a carpenter's daughter and I'm used to having an entire garage full of power tools, so doing this with nothing more than a hammer and a hand saw was a bit of a challenge. It's kinda rudimentary, nothing fancy, but Bruce likes it!

Bruce is a little too small to really navigate the ramp (he got this far before sliding down) so we're going to be fiddling with that a bit until he can get up.

Gah! Sorry, I am trying to make the photos smaller but photobucket is being dumb.

ETA: Okay, got it.

Wendy: Ha! Yes, in fact, our balcony/porch is enclosed, so we let him run free whenever one of us is around and it's sunny. Just had to put rocks in front of the drainage spouts so there were no, uh, tragic accidents.

And so far he only makes one noise-- the Angry Tortoise Hiss. This occurs if I pick him up BEFORE HE IS DONE PLAYING OUTSIDE. He's very spoiled.

He should get about twice that size, six inches in diameter. So he stays small.

No, sorry, no pool. Apparently the one major difference between turtles and tortoises is that tortoises cannot swim. He does have a little wading pool, however.

Places like Home Depot and garden stores have those plastic liners you can use for ponds, that might be good! The only thing is they tend to fill up with crud and sediment. My dad made a little waterfall and pool at my parents house, and what he did was drill a hole in the bottom and add a little pipe so he could drain it from the bottom (the pool is at a higher elevation on their property, and it drains out low).

I used to have a box turtle... just beware that they dig! I had him outside at my folks house, nodded off for a bit... and when I woke up he was GONE.