TODD THE TURTLE

We have a new addition to our home! Nope its not Cinco... It's Todd, our box turtle. Last week Atlanta experienced some really bad thunderstorms. As Kielle and Daddy were coming home, they almost ran over a turtle crossing the street. Daddy stopped the car and rescued the turtle.

Now I have been wanting a turtle for at least two years now. Why?! I have no idea, but every time we go into PetSmart I tell the kiddos, "Y'all tell Daddy I want a turtle." Well on Monday I finally got my turtle! When they walked in the door Kielle said, "Mommy wants a turtle." I thought it was completely random that she would mention this now, but I jumped right in and said," I sure do." Then she said, "No, we have a turtle." huh!? I'm confused. Then Daddy moved his jacket and said,"here you go!" Whoooooo Hoooo. There he was, just as cute as can be - MY TURTLE!

Khyri wanted to name the turtle Thomas, but I quickly vetoed that. Enough with the Thomas already! So we just called him turtle for awhile. Since we didn't know what kind of turtle we had, me and the munchkins loaded into the car and headed over to the PetSmart experts.

We took rough measurements of the turtle on some paper and asked what were the essentials needed for keeping the turtle happy. The expert said that we would need to buy a tank and some food, but other than that, turtles are easy pets to have. I didn't buy the tank right away because its was $159.99. I wanted to check some thrift stores first - you never know what you can find. So, we just grabbed a can of food and headed home.

We put the turtle in a box temporarily and we tried to make it "homey" by putting in some leaves, rocks, and branches. It wasn't fancy, but it would have to do until we figured out what type of habitat we wanted permanently.

We didn't keep the turtle locked up the first day, we let him outside and the munchkins had a lot fun trying to find him in the brush.

The munchkins loved picking him up and carrying him to different parts of the yard. I'm sure the turtle was annoyed, but you don't really ease into the Mosley family, we just kinda swarm you and envelope you :-) ahhahaha. Khyri tried to make the turtle literally "come out of his shell" and Kielle practiced moving like a turtle. You'd be surprised at how fast turtles move when they want to escape children! hahaha

After seeing the turtle outside in his element having a good time, I decided that I didn't want him to live in a cage in the house. Instead, I wanted to build him an outdoor habitat. Open laptop; head to google. I typed in Box turtle outdoor habitats and I was inspired by the photos I saw...

Awww shoogey doogey its project time! That night I kept researching what the key elements of an outdoor habitat was while the turtle slept in his box. During the night I decided to ask the turtle what his thoughts were on living outside and I just kept calling him Todd... and so it stuck. Todd the Turtle. He had a name... now all he needed was a home.

There are four main elements that are needed for a box turtle habitat:
shade
places to hide
water dishes
rocks to lay in the sun or eat on

I realized that all of this can be scavenged from the backyard. We didn't really need to purchase anything except a few plants for shade. My first step was to first a suitable location. I settled on an area on the South side of the house that gets a fair amount of shade and sun throughout the day. The area is right up against the fence so I only needed to close in one side. Khyri and I headed to The Home Depot Tuesday after school and picked up two hosta, which do really well in shade and are low enough for Todd to get some coverage, and one azalea plant, which by next spring should provide a little color to the area.

I started mapping out where I wanted each element to go. I figured I wanted to divide the area into zones that had a different textures. I had the pine straw zone, the covered zone, the water zone, and the rock zone.Now me being the crazy mommy that I am, I didn't' want these children helping me at all! I know I said Todd was our pet, but nuh uh.,.. not really - he's mine! alllll mine! While I was outside, the kiddos were inside drawing pictures of Todd.

The previous owners of the house left a ton of brick edgers on the sides of the house, so I used those to create a wall that Todd could not climb. He's already tried to escape twice into the forest behind our house, so I knew that the wall had to be formidable. I staggered the pattern and created an overhang so that, hopefully, he couldn't get a good grip on the backside and climb over to freedom. Now I know I'm pregnant.. I mean seriously how can I forget!... so you'll be happy to know that I devised a safe - well safer - way to transport the edgers from the side of the house to the habitat - I used the umbrella stroller!

Talk about ingenuity! I moved about 20 pavers around the house and up went the wall. Next I planted the foliage and added in some pine straw. The habitat was coming together slowly. I kept looking at it throughout the day and realized that I wanted more wood and more shade. So I looked to my inspiration photos for some ideas and decided to cut two extra flower pots that we had and create shaded nooks.

For his water area, I found a porcelain plate at Goodwill for $.99 and used that in the middle of the habitat for decoration. Its nice and shallow so he can drink of take a splash if he likes. I even took on of the curved pieces of edging and created a bridge by the "pool". After adding the plate, I moved onto gathering rocks. There are plenty of rocks in our backyard and on the side of the house so these were easy to find and add. I was still lacking something, though, and I couldn't put my finger on it.

Tuesday night I put Todd into his new habitat. Sweet Dreams Todd!

While driving Khyri to school on Wednesday, I saw a lot of downed trees from the storm. I needed a really large branch for the habitat - that's what was missing! So after I dropped Khyri off, I circled back and picked up a few large pieces of wood for the habitat that people had pulled from their yards.

Do you know when I got back home that doggone Todd had dug a hole under the darn fence and escaped! I couldn't' believe it. I was in the midst of making him his own oasis and yet he's steady trying to vacate the premises! arrrggghhh. Alas... he's a turtle, so he didn't get too far. I found him buried under some pinestraw right by the air conditioning units. Gotcha homie! hmph.

So now I was determined to really make his area nice. I added in the wood and put up my branches to serve as trees. then I shored up the fence area with pine cones and small rocks on the habitat side to keep him from digging. On the outside of the fence, I put some additional edgers down as more deterrent.

Todd's Personal Oasis

 The pictures really don't do it justice! This is a NIIIIIICE spot. I don't know why he would want to leave (Besides the fact that he could have been walking home on Monday to his family and we snatched him up and confined him... besides all that...). I still have that back right flower pot to fill (maybe a nice red rose bush?) and I am contemplating putting a small tomato plant in there somewhere so Todd can scavenge for his own food. I also need to add some wood chips or rocks to the ground. Apparently box turtles aren't too fond of grass. In preparation for when winter comes I need to build a box shelter in one of the corners to keep him warm. So there may be some future renovations in store :-)

He's no baby Mosley, but Todd sure does make this family feel complete :-)

Welcome to the Mosleys Todd!