Gopher tortoise on Sanibel Island
 

The wife and I spent some time on Sanibel Island recently, and one day after coming off of the beach to get on our bikes to ride back to the rental house, Connie spotted a gopher tortoise up the sandy road we used to ride the bikes out to get to a more secluded area of Bowman Beach. I happened to have the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ1000 camera with me, as I was taking some video of the dredging operation going on in the pass between Sanibel and Captiva islands. So I wanted to get some video of that gopher tortoise, even though he was a bit further away than I would have liked. I walked out to the sandy road and just started filming, figuring I would at least get some video before he got spooked and vanished into the undergrowth.

I needn't have worried about that, as it turned out. The tortoise simply started marching towards me like I wasn't even there. I mean he came RIGHT to me! I was glad I had shoes on, because I believe that had I been barefoot, he might have even tried to take a nibble of my toes thinking they were some sort of edible berries. I should have continued video taping while he was right underneath of me, but honestly I started laughing at that point and probably couldn't have kept the camera very steady anyway.

We saw him several times over the time we were there, but that was the only time that he actively headed in my direction. I guess he has seen enough people out there over his lifetime such that he wasn't much worried about human beings being out and about in his stomping grounds.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvuyThCXdSs

Wow, that is really cool.

Thanks so much for sharing that with all of us!!

Thank soooo much for that video. It Reminded me of the Gopher Tortoise we had when I was a child growing up in Gulfport, Mississippi. It's name was Pokey. We, my identical twin sister, and my 3 younger brothers loved that tortoise. Unfortunately when my brother Pete, left the door unlocked after he came in one day and Pokey, being a very smart tortoise got outside. You see, Pokey had the run of the house when he wasn't outside in his outdoor pen. That really broke all our hearts and my brother Pete was so upset over his error. Just a little info on Gophers as pets, they will go to the same place to eat and the same other place to go potty. We always thought that was pretty cool as he would go on the newspaper mom or one of us kids had to pick up the used and put down new ones for him.