Tres tortugas.

Yesterday the nice lady from 4 gardens down came to say she'd found Gonzalez after having a strong feeling of "being watched". All the gardens interconnect with gates, but all but next door's have a 4-5 foot drop beyond the gates, which would be considerable drops for an 8" tortoise. Hence I have absolutely no idea how he got there unscathed. Now he´s safely back in the garden with Herman, and they shared an apple together. While out there, what appeared to be a 2€ coin turned out to be a freshly minted baby tortoise! Soon after, another appeared, completely caked in mud. I gave it a wash in the sink (which it seemed to enjoy) and put them both in Shelly´s box (Shelly being the baby tortoise given by friends with a country house a couple of years ago, but now huge compared with the newcomers). The picture is of Herman, Shelly and one of the newcomers. After taking this, a third and even smaller one appeared, looking like a moving lump of mud. The clutch of eggs must have been buried somewhere in the garden and happened to hatch out today, which begs the question - is Herman a female? Or Gonzalez? Or the departed Goering? Hopefully not all 3....
I now have 6 tortugas.