Horatio comes to visit us

Annie and her Daddy brought Horatio the tortoise into class on Friday. He has recently woken up from his long winter sleep and we were keen to find out about this. We found out that Horatio is a self hibernating tortoise, which means that he digs his own hole in which to sleep in. We also found out about the kinds of foods he likes to eat and watched him eat some dandelion leaves at school. Horatio is an outdoor tortoise but after his long sleep needs to be warmed up and comes inside to spend time under a heat lamp ( much like our baby chicks after they had hatched). Horatio was a bit slower than usual and so Mr Denniss suggested a warm bath could help. We put some shallow warm water into an old tray and let him paddle his feet a little! We found out that Horatio was about 60 years old and will live to be about 80!! Wow!