Lebanese Tortoise

The weather is good, the weekend is short, and there is so much to see and do, so I took the tribe and got on the road again.We were on a mission, because we had to release a tortoise.
Last week, H. found a tortoise while we were out somewhere in the mountains, and of course it had to come home.

We figured it was a Golden Greek Tortoise (Testudo graeca terrestris)

The poor thing was a bit handicapped. It had his left leg missing, and the claws of his right front paw were gone as well. But the wounds were old, and it was pretty clear that this ‘cluster bomb’ victim was chugging along through nature just fine.
No matter, according to H, ‘he was coming home with her’. And sleeping in her bed too. Well, that did not quite materialize as she figured out pretty soon that the happy camper was peeing and pooing all over the place. See the missing leg? Well, not much to see, as it is missing. No claws on the front right either. He's been in a pickle, this one.

She washed him, scrubbed him, combed him (I swear I saw a brush), dressed him up and talked to him. It was in the interest of the animal however that she soon lost interest in him.
And so today, with her permission, we returned him to the wild. It was either that or turtle soup. The housekeeper was positively ogling him.

I often find tortoises in the wild here. We don’t have a lot of wildlife. Lack of rules and regulations, and/or the lack of enforcing these rules & regulations regarding the protection of wildlife is probably the biggest cause of it. That, and pollution, and the loss of habitat.
You can blame it on the war, but in general people in this part of the world do not show great empathy towards animals. Apart from canaries. I do not blame them. You can hardly expect people to start worrying about animals when people are suffering.

But tortoises seem to pretty tough animals. Look at this fellow. One leg and part of a hand (claw) missing, and a week with a girl, still going strong.