Tortoise adventure

Remember how just the other day I was saying I needed an adventure, well be careful what you wish for. I got myself quite a little adventure today.

My dads tortoise escaped apparently. He realized this morning that his tortoise, Wimby, hadn't eaten yesterdays food so he went looking around for him. Seems he found a way into the neighbors large yard.

I go over in the morning and first thing I do is, of course check on the little box turtles, they were all happy, healthy, and contained.

Next we, me and my brother, take a walk around the perimeter of dads yard to look for places Wimby could have escaped from and around the yard in general to make sure Wimby isn't just being cool and hiding out somewhere causing drama for no reason.

I find a pretty cool spider web.

Then there is the cat tail that has been in the yard for quite a while (months), not sure why no one has done anything with it. This is the first time I've seen it in person and I have no idea how they didn't notice the whole leg near or that it has a pelvis bones still attached too. (It's probably because no one is willing to look at it for too long or closely like I am.)

Next we take a walk to the corner of the yard and on the way I notice cat ribs and backbone. So clean!

One more step and I see a leg with paw still intact.

I have no explanation or know what to say about this stuff, I find it cool but it's kinda creepy that there are cat parts in the yard, and that they have been there for a while.

We find where we think is the only spot the tortoise could have gotten out and it leads to the neighbors yard, who have a MUCH larger yard with a lot more trees and brush and leaf litter. So I'm standing at the fence calling Wimby, yes he's a tortoise but he does come to people calling him especially since he is a pig and loves food and knows people feed him.

The fence reaches to my neck and it's on a bit of a slope so I'm hanging on to the fence to stabilize myself. I lose grip and my footing at the same time and slip down a bit and the bottom of my jaw is right above this beauty.
Luckily didn't hit it very hard but it didn't feel very good either. Leave it to me to have the soft part under my jaw right above a perfect place to get impaled!

My brother goes over to the neighbors, the proper way instead of hopping the fence and we eventually end up walking around their whole yard twice looking for Wimby. I knew I was going to be doing this but still when I left the house in the morning THESE are the shoes I put on! Seriously what is wrong with me, how stupid am I (don't answer that).
I am walking around in a yard with pretty much every surface you can think of, lots of twigs and thick leaf litter in an area that there are TONS of snakes and spiders and my feet are just SCREAMING taste me don't I look tasty!

We walk the whole yard twice, calling Wimby the whole time. Then we head out their front drive and take a walk down the street. On the way back my brother says, wow I just got REALLY dizzy, I tell him he better not pass out on me because I am so not carrying him anywhere, he may be my younger brother but he definitely isn't my little brother.

When we get back we decide it is lunch time. Have I ever said how much my brother loves bread, he does, A LOT!
After lunch and a stop back at my place for proper shoes we decide to hop the back fence and see if Wimby is hanging out there somewhere.

I sure hope he's not hiding out in the cactus cause I am NOT venturing into them to find him.

I also hoped he didn't decide to go for a long walk in this field. (or in my worst case scenario somehow manage to cross the field, the rather large road, and get through another fence and decide to take a "nap" on the train tracks. I am pretty sure he is big enough to cause a train derailment, especially if we were to put signs up with MY phone number on them, yeah that would not be good, not good at ALL!)
Now it was time to make signs. We found some spray paint but that wasn't going to work (I may or may not have been holding the can towards me when first trying to spray). So we went to the store down the street first to get us some LARGE markers. They didn't have LARGE markers so we got some larger sharpies and went to work.

We took one sign and put it at the top of the street and went to pick my husband up from work and get slurpees, it's hot being in the sun walking around all day looking for a tortoise. They had Barq's Rootbeer slurpees! BARQ'S ROOTBEER SLURPEES!!!! SO F'ING DELICIOUS and REFRESHING.

With the signs all made, nailed to stakes (which we later had to use wire and tape because hammering them in the rock hard ground shook the cardboard right off the stake) we set out to put up more. As we were hammering in the first sign we got a call from someone who's neighbor found a tortoise. They didn't know what to do with it so they called the humane society. We called the humane society, who were already closed so we have to wait until to tomorrow to get our tortoise back.

Not exactly the adventure I wanted but it was an adventure and it's not over yet. Hopefully it will be rather easy to get the tortoise back and I don't have to go through a million and one things to get Wimby back home.

Oh and you know what this brilliant redhead did, she went on an all day adventure WITHOUT sunscreen, yeah I'm just slightly red now. Love the red shoulder, the tank top strap, and then the diagonal bra strap! Luckily I'm not the typical super fair skinned red head and color like this usually fades into a nice tan (yeah cause those lines are nice).
This made me realize how pale I really am, how much sun I really don't get, and why I always need to remember sunscreen if I am going to be outside. Stupid stupid stupid. I've never been one to avoid the sun but I've never been a sun worshiper, especially since I've gotten tattooed, don't wanna prematurely age and fade those babies. My poor mermaid is all sorts of tan herself now.