Pat the Gopher Tortoise

Look at what now lives in my back yard! How cool is that?!

A few weeks ago we noticed a rather large hole in our "back-forty". We thought maybe the rabbits that live in our old Christmas tree had made a summer home...but today we were sitting on the couch...looking out the back porch to the yard, when all of a sudden there was sand flying up...something was digging. We only got a quick peek before it went into the hole but it was definitely a tortoise. Later, after the girls woke up from naps, we took them outside to see the hole, and there it was, sitting at the opening of the hole just staying cool in the shade and staring back at us.

We are so proud of all the wildlife we have in our little patch of land. We have rabbits, all kinds of birds, dragonflies, and now a tortoise.

We don't know if it's a girl or a boy so we've named it "Pat" for now.