Hello, and welcome to our backyard! I'm Kathleen. I'm the school secretary at an elementary school here in Henderson, which means I spend all day keeping track of four hundred and some children, and then I come home and keep track of two tortoises, and I am not sure which is harder. The children at least come when they're called.

Sheldon and Myrtle are Mojave desert tortoises. We adopted them in the spring of 1997 through a volunteer adoption program here in the valley that finds homes for captive tortoises, ones that have lived with people and can never go back to the wild. My husband Raymond was not sure about any of this. Raymond dug the burrow anyway. Raymond now talks to Sheldon in the mornings when he thinks I can't hear him.

This page is everything we've learned in two and a half years. I am not a veterinarian or a biologist, so please talk to a vet who knows reptiles about your own tortoise. But I have read every pamphlet the program gave us about forty times, and I take notes at the vet, and the girls in the office tease me that I have a three-ring binder on the subject, which is true.

Sheldon is the boy, and he is the boss of the yard, or thinks he is. His shell is about eleven inches long, dark brown and worn smooth on top, with a little nick on the back edge that he came to us with. He is bold. When he hears the patio screen slide open he comes marching across the grass to see what we've brought him, and if nothing is in my hand he looks at me like I've forgotten something important. He has rammed Raymond's work boots, the garden hose reel and, one time, a lawn gnome my sister gave us, which lost. Males do that, the program told us. It's a tortoise thing. It's also a Sheldon thing.

Myrtle is the girl, and she is shy. She's a little smaller, about nine inches, with a lighter, more golden shell, and she likes to keep to the far corner by the fence where the shade comes early. If you walk up on her quickly she pulls everything in and waits you out. If you sit very still on the back step and don't look at her, she will come to you, eventually, and eat a hibiscus flower right next to your foot. That's the best part of my day, if you want to know.

Nobody knows how old they are. The program guessed Sheldon at about thirty and Myrtle a bit younger, but they told us honestly that it's only a guess. Counting the rings on the shell doesn't work once a tortoise is grown.

How to tell a boy from a girl, in case you're wondering about your own:

• Underneath: a grown male's bottom shell has a dip in it, curving in toward his middle. A female's is flat.
• The chin: the plate that sticks out under the chin in front (the program called it the gular horn) is longer on a male and curves up a bit.
• The tail: a male's tail is longer and thicker.
• Our way: Sheldon is the one coming toward you. Myrtle is the one under the bush.

Before the program would let us adopt, a volunteer came out to look at our backyard. It had to be escape-proof (tortoises dig, and they climb better than you would believe), it had to have shade, it had to have a place for a burrow, and the pool had to be fenced off where they could never get to it. A tortoise that falls into a swimming pool can drown. Raymond put up a low block wall around the pool and the patio that spring, and I believe he is still a little sore about it.

Then he dug the burrow. Out here a tortoise needs a burrow to get away from the summer heat. In July, when it's well over a hundred, Sheldon and Myrtle come out in the early morning and again in the evening, and the rest of the day they're down in the cool. Raymond dug a sloping tunnel into a mound of dirt at the back of the yard, lined the roof with a sheet of plywood, piled the dirt back over it, and faced the opening away from the afternoon sun. It took him three Saturdays. He says it's the only hole he's ever dug that anybody thanked him for.

As for the lawn. Well. We have a patch of Bermuda grass, and Sheldon and Myrtle graze it, and dig in it, and wear paths across it, and Raymond, who grew up in Ohio where people care about lawns, grumbles about the lawn every single weekend. Then he goes out and checks to see if they've got enough shade. That's Raymond.

A few things we learned: we tore out the oleanders, because oleander is poisonous and you can't trust a tortoise not to taste it. We don't use weed killer or fertilizer anywhere they graze. And we check the fence line every week for new digging, because Myrtle, for all her shyness, has twice almost made it under into the neighbors' yard.

Desert tortoises are grazers. In the wild they eat grasses and wildflowers and whatever green things come up after the rain. At our house that means:

Iceberg lettuce is mostly water and does them no good at all. Pet food is the big one. It's far too rich for a tortoise, and the program told us it can do real harm to their shells and their insides over time. When people at work hear I have tortoises they always say, "Do you feed them lettuce?" and I have to give my little speech.

Squash is a treat, not a meal. I grate a little yellow squash over their greens on Sundays, and Sheldon has learned what day it is.

If you'd like to see what's growing out in the real desert, where the wild tortoises do their eating, Nora and Hal Brightman keep track of the spring bloom on their page, Desert Wildflower Watch.

Desert tortoises get a lot of their water from the plants they eat, and they're very good at holding on to it. But ours always have water. We keep a wide, shallow dish sunk into the ground so the rim is level with the dirt, and only an inch or so deep, so they can walk in and out easily and can never tip over in it. I rinse it and fill it fresh every morning before work.

When it rains, which here is not often, they come out and stand in it with their heads stretched out and drink and drink. The first time I saw Myrtle do it I called Raymond out of the shower.

Not every vet sees reptiles, so ask before you go. Ours is Dr. Lois Yung, and they see her once a year at the end of summer, before the winter sleep, plus any time something looks wrong. She weighs them, looks at their eyes and nose and mouth, checks the shell all over, and checks for worms.

The thing I watch for most at home is the nose. A runny nose or bubbles at the nostrils can mean a respiratory infection, and that's serious in a tortoise. It's one of the big reasons a captive tortoise can never be turned loose: it could carry an illness out to the wild ones.

This year: both of them went in on Saturday, September 11. Both had gained a little since last year, both had clear noses and bright eyes, and Dr. Yung said they're ready for winter. Sheldon tried to ram the scale. Myrtle hid in her box and would not come out until we were in the car. So, normal.

Desert tortoises sleep through the cold months. The proper word for it in reptiles is brumation, which I learned from the program and now use at every opportunity. Here in the valley, as the days cool off in October, they slow down, eat less, and spend more and more time in the burrow, and by November they're asleep until the warm days come back in late winter or early spring.

Some people let them sleep in the burrow. We bring ours in, because I worry. Here's how we do it:

1. Only healthy tortoises should go to sleep. That's why the vet visit comes first.
2. Stop feeding about two weeks before. Food left in their stomachs over the winter can spoil inside them. They still get their water. This is the hardest part for me, because Sheldon stands at the patio door looking betrayed.
3. The boxes. Each one gets a sturdy wooden box with shredded newspaper in it, and the boxes go on a shelf in the garage, up off the floor, where it stays cool and dark and quiet. It has to stay cool, but it must never freeze. Raymond hung a thermometer and checks it every night on his way to take out the trash, and he writes the number on a card.
4. Peek, but don't fuss. I check on them every week or so, without waking them up, to make sure they look all right.
5. Spring. When they start moving around on their own, out they come, into the sun, with a shallow drink of water first, and then their first meal. Last March Sheldon went straight for the lawn. Raymond said, "Welcome back."

Right now, at the end of September, they're still eating well and out in the mornings. The boxes are down from the rafters and dusted off. I'll start cutting back on the food in the middle of October.

Please read this part even if you skip everything else.

• Never take a tortoise out of the desert. It is against the law. The Mojave desert tortoise has been listed as a threatened species since 1990, and the wild ones need every tortoise they've got.
• Never let a pet tortoise go. That's against the law too, and for a good reason: a tortoise that's lived with people can carry sickness out to the wild ones. If you can't keep yours anymore, call an adoption program. That's what they're for, and that's how we got ours.
• Don't pick up a wild tortoise. When they're frightened they can empty their bladders, and they lose water they need to get through the dry months.
• A tortoise is a very long commitment. They can live a very long time, longer than a lot of people. Sheldon and Myrtle may well outlive Raymond and me. Our will says our daughter gets them, and she has agreed, and Raymond has already started telling her about the lawn.