#gopher tortoise day

[great-and-small]

18 burrows> 18 holes

[great-and-small]

It’s a very special day 🥹

I’m a simple creature I see @great-and-small gopher tortoise posts and I hit reblog

[soupcrouton]

YOOO fellow field worker what type of field stuff do u do

It was a lab! Im in a natural resource sampling class

[the-starry-seas]

It's Gopher Tortoise Day!

April 10th was officially adopted by the Gopher Tortoise Council as Gopher Tortoise Day! In Florida, gopher tortoises are found in parts of all 67 counties and are frequently encountered in neighborhoods, along roadways, and in many of Florida’s public parks and forests. The goal of Gopher Tortoise Day is to increase awareness and appreciation for these long lived, gentle reptiles. Gopher tortoises are considered a keystone species because they dig burrows that provide shelter for 360 other species of wildlife, called "commensals." These commensal species include the gopher frog, Florida mouse, eastern indigo snake, and hundreds of invertebrates like beetles and crickets. Without the gopher tortoise, many of these species would not exist.

- gophertortoisedayfl.com

[uncharismatic-fauna]

Going to Ground with the Gopher Tortoise

The gopher tortoise, sometimes specified as the Florida gopher tortoise (Gopherus polyphemus), is a species of tortoise found only in the southeastern United States. They require highly specialized habitats of dry, sandy soils, few trees, and a variety of low-growing vegetation. These habitats include coastal scrub, pine flat-woods, and sparse prairie.

As their name implies, gopher tortoises spend a large part of their time underground. They are widely known for digging large burrows, on average 4.5 m (14 ft) in length and 2 m (6.5 ft) deep. These burrows are particularly used at night and during the winter, where they can maintain a steady temperature throughout the year. Individuals maintain a relatively small home range around their burrow(s), up to 1.6 acres. Within this range, they forage on a wide variety of grasses, flowers, and shrubs. Gopher tortoises are also predated on by a variety of animals; eggs and juveniles are vulnerable to raccoons, coyotes, bobcats, skunks, birds of prey, and snakes. Adults are more shielded, but can still be coyotes, bobcats, Florida black bears, and Florida cougars.

Like other tortoises, G. polyphemus is heavily armored by a thick shell encasing the body. When threatened, individuals can pull their heads and limbs inside the shell for protection. Adults can reach a maximum length of 38.7 cm (15.24 in) and an average mass of 5.5 kg (193.83 oz), with females usually being slightly larger than males. The coloration is rather dull to blend into their surroundings, usually dark brown, tan, or grey on top and lighter tan on the bottom of the shell.

Mating for Florida gopher tortoises can occur from March through December. When they are ready to mate, males court females by bobbing their heads and walking in circles around the female. If she reciprocates, she may allow the male to mount; this process can be repeated several times over the course of several hours. Both sexes will mate with multiple partners throughout the season. After mating, the female digs a large hole and lays a clutch of 5-8 eggs. These eggs take 80 to 100 days to hatch, and young are immediately independent. Young are extremely vulnerable to predation, but those that survive reach full maturity between ages 9 to 21. Individuals can live up to 70 years in the wild.

Conservation Status: Florida gopher tortoises are considered Vulnerable by the IUCN. The species is threatened primarily by habitat destruction and fragmentation.

Photos

Florian Marchner

Amanda Hurst

Charles Warren

[lostinhistory]

He doesn't live in a sewer, his name isn't Donatello and he doesn't ride a skateboard. But little Root the turtle does get around on his own set of wheels.

The wood turtle came to live at the Museum of Natural History in Halifax last September.

Unlike most turtles, Root is missing his right front foot.

Heather McKinnon Ramshaw, the museum's animal care specialist, says she doesn't know how he lost the foot, but he's been that way for a long time. She says he was originally collected from the wild by Natural Resources Department personnel and brought into captivity 20 years ago — possibly because of his missing foot.

Root spends most of his time in his enclosure, which is filled with wood chips and has a container of water that he can swim around in.

But three times a week, staff at the museum take him out on a little stroll.

Early on, they noticed that as Root was tootling around, he was scraping his plastron, or bottom shell, on the floor.

"Because one leg is essentially shorter than the other one, we found that he was kind of clunking his shell down," McKinnon says. "There was some wear on the shell and we didn't want it to get worse, so he needed something to lift him up."

Enter Tessa Biesterfeld, a naturalist interpreter at the museum.

The museum had a Lego exhibit in December, and Biesterfeld had the idea to create a platform with wheels out of Lego pieces to lift Root up higher so his shell wouldn't get damaged.

The first incarnation used medical adhesive tape and a bandage to attach some wheels, but staff didn't want to have to stick something to his shell every time he went out for his constitutional. So Biesterfeld came up with the idea of using a removable dog harness along with the Lego platform and wheels.

"We thought that'd be so great because we know it's non-toxic, we know that we can replace the parts as we need, and should his shell change or grow, we can change the shape and size of that. It's very modular," says Biesterfeld.

The first day, Root had an unexpectedly speedy slide down a ramp, but quickly became accustomed to using the contraption.

"Now when I snap his harness on, it's like when he hears that snap, he's ready to go," says Biesterfeld.

With the help of his wheels, Root enjoys exploring different areas of the museum, and may even have a leg up on other members of his species.

"We didn't want to make a skateboard or make anything that would just have him zooming too unnaturally fast, but he's clearly going a little faster than the average wood turtle but he seems happy to do so. He's getting lots of great exercise," Biesterfeld says.

Root has spent most of his 20 years in captivity at the Oaklawn Farm Zoo in Aylesford, N.S., and, after the zoo closed at the end of 2023, at the Shubenacadie Wildlife Park.

But staff at the wildlife park decided he needed a new home because he was being a little too assertive with the other turtles, standing in the food dish and intimidating others, preventing them from eating. So he ended up at the museum.

McKinnon describes Root's personality as "very bold, brave, I don't want to say overbearing," but also a bit timid around people.

Root and Gus, the museum's famous, beloved centenarian gopher tortoise, have not met, partly because they may not get along, but also because turtles can pass diseases to each other.

But with Root's fancy wheels, it's possible the museum could have another shell-ebrity on its hands.

Wood turtles are a species at risk in Nova Scotia, so having one is special because the museum would never collect one from the wild, McKinnon says.

Wood turtles can live for 50 to 80 years.

"We may have him for a while, so we want to make sure he's comfortable," McKinnon says.

[katthebanana2]

Day 14: Lusus

I imagine Fozzer's lusus is a gopher tortoise, considering that he gets very defensive whenever someone else's opinions or views don't align with his own, which I connected with a tortoise's shell. Gopher tortoises are also notorious for burrowing, and--y'know--Fozzer digs.

[smallepics]

Spring Lamb, Lau B.

@nosebleedclub Poetry Month Prompts 04.05.25

Dedicated to @aemperatrix

TEXT ID

I think of you

Pastoral

Summersweetened thicket,

Wildflower rose

My home lays low

Cypress bodies, oaken hands

Cyanobacteria ripples the sun. I wonder ’bout your fences

If they’re hewn from the same dark root holding up my spring shore

We’ve got no lambs here. None in the swamp

Cows, nanny goats & gopher tortoise munch slow

Alay in the field a muted and stormy vista.

I wonder if the hills turn purple, slate into gray.

Can you see for miles?

Do aspen spike the same twisted shape? How stubborn

Is your green? When hay comes dust it all?

Late day

On the western shore the sun sinks

Cordgrass burns

Pink and the egret’s white shadow

Must be that color of wool

[teratocrat]

When I first came to Ajax, when I stepped out of the red-and-yellow shuttle to plant my feet in the planet's sand, what I noticed before anything else was how pale the buildings are. On Mars, even in the warmest and most equatorial provinces, human habitation is universally black (or its best approximation), built from fulcrete and basalt and painted wood, to absorb the warmth of the sun against the bitter cold. On Ajax, far closer to its sun than Mars or even Earth, and with its 39-hour days, they must build for the opposite, towers of white or reflective silver with burrowed basements and sub-basements and sub-sub-basements underneath. The Ajactes live in cities the color of bone. The second thing I noticed, the thing that probably any other person would notice first, was the surfeit of salt in the air. I noticed this because it stung my eyes, like the threat of tears. As it happens, Ajax's oceans are significantly more saline than Earth's or Emieni's, and even its topsoil is a kind of hardpan composed of sand and dust cemented in a salt matrix. For the first several centuries of its habitiforming, it hosted an extremely carefully managed tight ecosystem of halophilic algae, bacteria and lichen painstakingly shipped from Earth and Mars, fed upon by a few species of brine shrimp. Gradually, the Hesperides introduced more species as the previous ones found their foothold: turtleweed and saltbush and cordgrasses, periwinkles and blue crabs and flamingos, suites of genetically-modified mangroves whose knees whistled in the morning and evening hours, bananas and maize and halotolerant rice. Most recently (within the last two hundred and fifty years) the Ajax Planetary Authority had grown increasingly bold and experimental: a breed of sheep brought out of cryogenic vaults on Old Earth to eat the masses of seaweed that washed ashore around the Southernmost Continent, whitetail deer both to manage the turtleweed scrubland that was covering the northern half of the Great Continent and to provide a stable meat source more robust than flamingos and periwinkles, a kind of gopher tortoise/diamondback terrapin hybrid that had proved encouragingly robust in the prairies of Mars, and even tigers to laze about in the shade of the forests that bordered saltmeadows full of bounding deer. All the Ajactes I spoke to seemed both personally invested in and extraordinarily proud of these tigers, showing me images and videos on their utility wedges, and several of the state television channels would cut away to live feeds of the animals sleeping or bathing their cubs or stalking prey.

[statusquoofficial]

Book Snippet: Status Quo

Chapter 8- Expectations

“Ta-dah!”

Arms extended out in high-energy showmanship, Canopy waited eagerly for my amazement. But as I scanned around, finding no sign of a burrow, tracks or a single tortoise to speak of, we were left in awkward suspension.

“Where… Where is it?”

Canopy glanced to the side uncomfortably, struggling to keep up the smile. Finally, her arms dropped and her face shifted to befuddlement. It was like she didn’t even know how to respond to such a question. But how was it unreasonable? There was no turtle, I was promised a turtle. Maybe a six-eyed monstrosity with a shell stronger than steel. Or maybe it would be smaller than a mouse or bigger than a-

Oh.

On cue, the ground beneath us rumbled and tremored and flocks of birds burst into the sky. Behind my very smug guide, soaking up my moment of realisation and pure disbelief, the grand cave birthed a gopher tortoise that could eat gophers like breath mints. My jaw hit the ground as Canopy gleefully dragged me to the side, allowing the magnificent giant to stride by one booming step at a time.

“Ta-daaah…” She sang again as I beamed down at her like a birthday boy. “What do you think, Mr Science? Still reckon it couldn’t kill us?”

“This is the best day of my life.”

Her snorting giggle only added to the excitement as our headlining act tore lush oaks straight from the soil, chewing them mesmerisingly slow. Turning over the container in my hand, I realised that taking a sample or a specimen wouldn’t be a viable option, to say the least.

Guess we’re gonna be here a while…

Driven by over-confidence, I hiked up the side of the cliff, ignoring the continued smugness of the girl who beat me to the summit by a decade or two. Nevertheless, she gave me a hand getting onto the final ledge, struggling to hoist me up before tumbling back into the grass with dramatic exhaustion. So, more than content with lying down, she decided to kick her feet over the side and enjoy a deep, relaxing stretch in the morning sun.

Chuckling with endearment, I pulled out my journal and started sketching the ginormous creature, but the peaceful ambience only lasted until Canopy got bored. She fussed and fidgeted, huffed and puffed, plucking blades of grass from the ground next to her. And when she was met only with the back of my head, she resorted to extreme measures to get my attention.

“Ow!”

Mischievous snickering sounding behind me, another twig flicked into my neck. So in a moment of visceral retaliation and immaturity, I chucked a piece of gravel back at her, only adding to her game. We fired back and forth like medieval catapults, dodging each other's attacks with fierce determination. But the battle was lost when she grabbed a handful of soil and shoved it down my collar, a triumphant grin spread across her colourful cheeks as I wrestled her off.

“Seriously? You play dirty.” I grumbled, taking off my vest and shaking out my now-stained shirt.

“Says the one covered in dirt.”

Glaring back, I reached over her, hands planted on either side of her waist as she froze solid. Failing to notice the glow of her cheeks, I pulled her journal from her belt bag and held it up sternly between our noses.

“I have to do my job now. Why don’t you keep reading to me so you aren’t such a pain?” I suggested, expecting a light-speed leap into action. But she simply nodded quickly and accepted the book, not moving an inch until I was an appropriate distance away again. Even then, she was quiet.

“Well?”

“Uh, yeah- Um… Do you want me to read the page about the turtle?” Her voice was soft, shaken. Since when did she need prompting?

“Sure. Good idea.”

“O-okay. Well, they aren’t very common, too big I guess, but their burrows are super useful. They last forever and when the turtle leaves, heaps of other animals move in and use the cave for shelter. They also seem good at keeping the forest in check. If the trees get too tall and then fall down, it’s really bad. Even just the way the trunk blocks everyone from moving around can cause issues. One time, this massive pine tree fell, and it re-routed a river, so this lake dried out and-“

“Canopy… The turtle?” I chimed, waving the pencil down into the clearing.

“Whoops, sorry.”

“It’s ok, keep going.”

Back to her usual demeanour, she sat up, shuffling in next to me and watching the sketch take shape as she talked. Eventually, she moved on from the turtle, getting distracted by a new train of thought that I’ll admit was much more interesting. So, she provided the entertainment while I took it all in, the view and her.

“-it doesn’t make any sense, you know?”

“Yeah, the animals can’t just get endlessly bigger. Maybe it’s the oxygen that limits them. The levels are higher now, but at a certain point, animals just can’t spread it through their bodies effectively.”

“Wow, cool… I didn’t know that. You’re so much fun to talk to.” Canopy commented sweetly, brushing up against me as I made some annotations about scale and other new-world changes to our herbivorous subject. Charmed, I returned her warmth.

“Well, you’re fun to listen to.”

Oblivious as ever, a tickle on my shin caught my attention, a soft tail swaying between us. My eyes trailed all the way up to its owner, who drew her knees up under her chin and stared at me with a shy smile. It was no surprise by this point that she looked away when our gazes met, but she didn’t go far, gazing fondly at my journal instead.

Neither of us ruined the moment, enjoying the breeze and the sunshine, and each other.

[great-and-small]

Well this is awkward

[spottys-rathole]

Sometimes I sleep fine, and sometimes I stay awake at 3AM thinking about the History (capital H) of Cerise the tortoise. Do you guys know about Cerise ? Imma tell you about Cerise Plane crashes into the wall -> First day of the french speakers -> They start settling between spawn and the Favelas While out exploring and discovering the mods, AyPierre stumbles upon various fauna and decides to bring back two wild gopher tortoises to give to Pomme. He puts them in a small enclosure behind her temporary shit-house, these are her very first pets ; she names them Tomate and Cerise (together "Cherry Tomato") Fastforward summer 2023 : Baghera starts building the Swiss village but she needs space for that and temporary destroys Tomate and Cerise's enclosures to make room and claims they'll relocate them into a better one later (they never did). She puts them in a temporary chest outside that she was using for organizing building blocks. Fastforward again September 2023 : Carre arrives on the island, and while exploring the server, finds himself in the Swiss village. He finds that not-so temporary chest, rummages through it out of curiosity and is delighted to find tortoises exist on this server but also clicks on it. Cerise retracts into her shell and Carre gasps in horror thinking he has killed her and grabs her shell and runs away with it with Roier as a witness. Later on, when he settles down to build his Argentina neighborhood, he puts all his excessive belonging into one chest. That includes Cerise. And that's where Cerise has been residing 'till the very end. And to this day i still think about the fact that probably noone knows. Like not even the players. I don't think Pomme noticed either. Noone knows Cerise has been missing, the wiki certainly doesn't know as it claims she's still in the Swiss village. Carre, bless his heart, doesn't know he accidentaly killed stole a child's first pet, but I know, and I know Cerise has been missing for longer than she has ever remained in the village.

[bots-and-cons]

Hey a while back I sent in an ask that wasn’t an ask it was more like a submission. I didn’t think about it getting deleted when I re-deleted my account. I do that during collage semesters to fight the adhd urge to scroll and put off schoolwork but I pop in from time to time to check on old friends and interact.

Long story short this is the inspiration for the asking each respectable mech to take care of their tortoise Shelldon when they are gone. (Thanks for writing that btw😄) I went with an African spurred tortoise because it’s own-able. The real life Shelldon is an endangered and federally protected gopher tortoise that I think is about 3 years old now because he showed up in the spring of 2022 and mother gopher tortoises have been observed allowing offspring to hunker down in their burrow for their first winter.

But yeah dude showed up when I was replanting lettuce in my greenhouse and he started rummaging through the plants I just tossed on top of the compost pile, then he dug his burrow against my fence, and in a cat like fashion I have tortoise now and thus can never move 😂.

Due to him being a wild and protected tortoise I don’t want him to become dependent so I feed him only every so often and avoid dropping food (and I do a ton of research on what he can and can’t have) at the same time of morning or afternoon. I typically give him stuff most during the dry season since we’ve had droughts and in the winter when things die back. I will sprinkle stuff in the yard occasionally so he gets assorted veggies, I bought a small cylinder of grassland tortoise pellets, and he gets calcium fortified tortoise treats to find when out foraging every so often. But my biggest thing has been planting native grasses and a little patch of dandelions and wild pea plants against the fence.

I mean I probably shouldn’t interact with him at all legally but he moved into my yard and seemed to have a rough first year on his own, I had to move him back to his hole a few times because he got lost in my yard in 100 degree heat at the hottest part of the day when tortoises or really any animals avoid being out and started pacing in circles by the walkway because he knew he couldn’t get back to his hole in time and his shell was scalding hot those times I had to pick him up but he has seemed to have learned his lesson on what time of day is appropriate to be out and I haven’t had to move him since.

But yeah thank you for answering my ask, sorry for the ramble, and I hope you have a great week! 😄

I was wondering what happened to the ask, I thought tumblr was just being tumblr, because the amount of asks in my inbox didn't change but the ask itself disappeared. At least now I know what causes the phantom ask thingy to happen.

Anyway, I love all kinds of tortoises/turtles, and I think they're super cool, and Shelldon is also very cute. All of that is also really interesting, honestly I don't know much about tortoises in general even though we used to have one when I was a kid. Shelldon has a cool story to go with him too I see :D I think the way you're taking care of him is very reasonable and it's good you're not making him be dependent on you. Idk about the legality of it, but I don't think it's a bad thing. He looks very cute in the pictures, one hungry boi :D

[imababblekat]

This is Sheldon 😂 he’s an endangered gopher tortoise who showed up one day in 2022 (I think he was barely one because is was spring-summer time and mother gopher tortoises have been observed allowing their young to take shelter in their burrows over the winter) when I was replanting stuff in my greenhouse and he went straight for the old lettuce plants I threw in a compost “pile” by the greenhouse (they were starting to flower which turns their sap from clean to white and is gets sour). After that he went around and dug his burrow on the other side of my fence. He is still there and is about 3 ? I think and currently has been working semi weekly hole under my fence so he doesn’t have to walk all the way to the gate to go under. Occasionally we will get droughts and most of my grass and even the weeds will die off so I’ll occasionally sprinkle stuff randomly in my yard during those times of year for him to find when foraging to supplement his diet but I don’t want him to be reliant on me or too used to people. My recent ongoing project is to find native plants that gopher tortoises like to eat and plant them in my yard in accessible areas for him to find on his own. (Sorry for the very long adhd tortoise ramble 😅😂).

Ooooooh my goodneeeesss!!! Look at him scoots and him lil face!!! He is so stinking cute! And can I say how I absolutely love how he's just living his best life if your back yard like an un official pet of sorts! Where I'm from we got rattlesnakes, tarantulas, you name it, but nothing like this! I can't even imagine having a rattlesnake in my backyard that I'd just occasionally give some food or water lol XD

You're very lucky to have such a cute lil wild buddy, and he's very luck to have an adopted human such as you to help him out in hard times; he just a lil guy （；´д｀）ゞ

[prokaryotics]

helped a gopher tortoise on the highway on my way home from work and it’s been the only thing to genuinely stave off the nightmare of living in this country every day really is all there is go help someone cross the road

[robertgolfcartrentaltips]

Things to do in Jensen Beach

Introduction

Jensen Beach, a hidden gem on Florida's Treasure Coast, attracts visitors with its relaxed charm and wide range of outdoor activities. Whether you're an experienced explorer or a family in search of tranquility, this coastal haven has something for all. To discover the delightful downtown area especially, think about renting a golf cart and meandering through the streets bordered by pastel cottages and local stores.

Beaches and Water Sports

No trip to Florida is truly complete without lolling in the sun on the beautiful beaches. Jensen Beach offers a variety of stunning shorelines, each with its charm. Walton Rocks Beach, a local gem, provides gentle waves ideal for families with young children and includes a special dog park so your furry mate can enjoy the beach too. For a more hidden retreat, visit Waveland Beach to relax under swinging palm trees and listen to the soothing sound of the ocean.

The real enchantment of Jensen Beach lies in its waterways. The Indian River Lagoon, a protected estuary overflowing with marine life, is a paradise for water lovers. Rent a kayak or paddleboard for a peaceful adventure through the mangrove forests. You may find playful dolphins, graceful manatees, and a variety of bird species. For an exciting experience, consider hiring a fishing boat to challenge your fishing abilities against the diverse marine life. The Indian River Lagoon is famous for its plentiful game fish, making it a must-visit destination for fishing enthusiasts.

Explore at Your Own Pace

The beaches are quite long in length, and I know you don’t want to walk all the way from your hotel to the beach. While exploring Jensen Beach, consider renting a golf cart for a unique and convenient way to navigate the town. Imagine cruising through the streets in a 4-seater golf cart in Jensen Beach, enjoying the fresh air and soaking in the sights at your own pace. This is particularly advantageous for families with young children or those who may find walking long distances challenging. Rental golf carts offer the freedom to explore hidden gems, charming shops, and tucked-away restaurants, all within the comfort of your electric vehicle.

Nature Trails and Parks

Jensen Beach is a haven for outdoor lovers. Discover the picturesque paths of Savannas Preserve State Park, a vast 5,000-acre sanctuary filled with a rich collection of plants and animals. Trek or cycle through the vibrant scenery, watching for gopher tortoises, sandhill cranes, and various bird species. To add a special touch, take a guided airboat tour through the mangroves. This exciting adventure offers a close look at the fragile ecosystem and provides insights into its significance.

A Touch of History and Culture

Jensen Beach offers more than sun, sand, and surf. Immerse yourself in the region's rich history with a visit to the Mansion at Tuckahoe, a meticulously restored historic landmark. Explore the beautifully preserved rooms and learn about the area's captivating past. For a touch of whimsy, head to the Artist Cottages, a charming enclave where local artists showcase their talents. Browse through vibrant paintings, handcrafted jewelry, and unique souvenirs, taking home a piece of Jensen Beach's creative spirit.

Sunset and Vibrant Nightlife

As the sun dips below the horizon, Jensen Beach transforms into a haven for relaxation. Enjoy a delicious seafood dinner at a waterfront restaurant, taking in the breathtaking views of the Indian River Lagoon. Downtown Jensen Beach comes alive in the evenings, with its charming boutiques and art galleries staying open late for relaxed browsing. Catch some live music at a local bar or enjoy a delightful performance of Music at the Mansion series, held at the historic Mansion at Tuckahoe.

Conclusion

Jensen Beach offers an unforgettable escape, catering to every traveller's desires. From action-packed water adventures to serene beach days and cultural exploration, this charming coastal town promises an experience that will leave you yearning for more. Don’t forget to go for a 4-person golf cart rental near you in Port St. Lucie to save your money on Uber or walking all day long on the roads. With wheels secured, you'll be cruising towards unforgettable memories in Jensen Beach in no time!