This is most certainly not what I expected to see when I was walking home from the local country park on Monday.

A woman had set up a small fenced enclosure on a common area of grass and brought her five Leopard tortoises out to graze. Obviously, these are not native British species; they are pets, though perhaps a bit more exotic than the usual domestic cat or dog. Still, they were such beautifully marked creatures that I thought I would write this short post about them.

The Leopard tortoise (Stigmochelys pardalis) is native to the savanna grasslands of southern and eastern Africa, and is predominantly vegetarian. These five, all males, were bred in Britain; their owner told me she had started with two, then, over the years, taken in three more whose owners no longer wanted them. She asked if I wanted to hold one so I did – George, who likes having the top of his head scratched (his skin was dry and rough to the touch) and who was heavier than I expected (his carapace was thicker than I realised). George was very handsome but I soon returned him to the pen, where he marched off more speedily than you might think to munch on a longer area of grass.