And those eggs, both there and with us had not hatched adequately or none had hatched successfully. So my old friend, Chuck Shaw from early days at San Diego, and I compared notes over and over. And we came to the conclusion as they were having trouble mating, that his tortoises were kept in San Diego on very hard ground and ours were the same. And as the tortoises continued to walk, they’ll act of course, like little steamed rollers, road rollers, and they pound down the soil and gets harder and harder. So what Chuck did was bring in truckloads in San Diego, truckload upon truckload of sand and made a huge sand pile in one end of their display. What we did to soften the soil was to make a big mud wallow. And it worked in our case, they did mate successfully. And in ’53, the females would lay, and we’d see, they lay just at dusk, and they dig the holes, and then we’d put a little fence around so when the eggs would hatch, the youngsters would be contained in the fenced area.
