not demanding...just. you have to know what you are doing, and they get huge. he is VERY young. He is 12" long and weighs ten pounds. He was only 9" long and weighed 5 lbs. five months or so ago....
He is going to get to 200 lbs and live 100 years. When they get bigger they burrow under your house, move furniture.
Here is a good story, but a long read about what it is like to raise a tort:
The Harpo Chronicles:Life with an African Spurred Tortoise... - Bravenet Blog
excerpts:
Harpo was getting very, very strong and rearranged the basement daily. As he grew, he was able to move bigger and better things with each day. He moved anything from stools to the TV, from my grooming table to my compact refridgerator, from bird cages to the washing machine (which was pretty dented up by the time he got done with it). I was finishing up some paperwork one day at my desk, when my stool began to move - I knew Harpo was walking around by my feet, so I put them on the rungs stool out of his way, but I didn't realize Harpo had wedged himself under the bottom rungs, and was literally carrying me away!
He explored every square inch of our 2 acre backyard - our neighbors soon started calling to see if I knew I had a huge turtle roaming around. One neighbor left a hysterical message on our voice mail one day, thinking Harpo was a huge snapping turtle and he would injure our dogs. When everyone finally realized Harpo was friendly, they began to enjoy him as much as we did. He became the hit of neighborhood cookouts and even began to receive visitors!
He started greeting my clients at the gate every morning, and they would come back in the afternoon with their kids in tow. Then one day, we saw him digging out on the hill.
In the space of a week, he had a 10 foot burrow dug out, and had started on another, which was finished in just a few more days. This was so amazing to watch - his digging power was unreal (luckily, we had no landscaping in the backyard due to the dogs, otherwise, we could have just kissed it good-bye!).
