Wild Bill

Meet Wild Bill. He's a fully grown Gopher Tortoise, around 30-40 years old. This lucky guy showed up, literally, on our doorstep one morning about a month ago. We came to work in the morning and he was sitting in front of the door with a few grapes. We do not know who put him there, if he was kept in captivity at all or was just found in the wild. His eyes were so sunken and cloudy that we weren't sure if he had any. He was pretty much just skin and bone and could barely move. After a week at the vet's office, receiving fluids, eye and nose drops, we picked him back up, and he looked much better!
We continued to give him the drops, and now his eyes look great and nose is cleared up. We put him in a large container of sand to roam around in, and every day he gets a little stronger and walks around more. The hardest part has been to get him to eat. He'll eat a few bites of banana, and sometimes we take him out to the dunes where he can eat his native vegetation, like dollar weed. He also likes to soak in a bucket of warm water.

His progress is encouraging, so he will probably be just fine. He will probably not be able to be released, and in that case we'll keep him here at the nature center to teach people about this important species, which is unfortunately is threatened.