Nature blessed me

A new friend in my front garden:



I was taking some stuff out to the trash and there he (? I didn't pick it up to check; you can tell male or female by plastron shape) was.

I am pretty sure that's an ornate box turtle (Cue Fluttershy sighing and saying "Tortoise!" because these are land dwellers - genus Terrapene -and I think of turtles as aquatic. Though I guess there ARE terrestrial turtles)

Here's a better photo of the shell:



I occasionally have these wandering through my yard. I wonder if the sandy soil around here provides hibernacula for them (I presume like many tortoises, they dig down into the soil over winter to hibernate). I don't mind them especially this year because I have no tomatoes that they will munch on, and no things like strawberries they might eat. And anyway - I would be less annoyed about losing a tomato to one of these guys as opposed to losing ALL of them (as has happened some years) to possums or raccoons.