Brand New Diggs

I spent a few hours yesterday and most of today in the garage building a new turtle habitat. Virgil, our baby Hermans tortoise, has been living in shallow 10 gallon aquarium since we got him in early November. He really needs more room than that to roam around. Jen found an interesting two level enclosure that someone had built special for their turtle and looked fairly easy to build. I have the main construction finished and sanded. Tomorrow we will pick out some stain that will look good on it. After the stain and several coats of polyurethane for moisture proofing I will finish all of the fine details. There are some tree branches that someone gave us to make Charley a play gym, but we never did. The idea is to cut them into small pieces and then split them in half. Once they are split I can use them to make the railings for the upper level and the ramp. The ramp will also be paved with the sticks and some others will be placed around the inside to make it feel more like outside for him. The bottom will be a mix of dirt and sand with a small trough of live weeds for him to eat. Here are some pictures off Virgil's new home so far.