Gardening is a wonderful activity for any of us to be involved in, @friendlymoose, and this just isn't right:

"They even crawled into my tomato plant to eat the juicy cherry tomatoes."

I mean eating anything in your garden is bad enough. But, your cherry tomatoes? A step too far, no doubt. That was an excellent picture catching it in the act, so it is not like they can claim they didn't do it. 😉

Seriously, we had a similar problem this past summer. More than any previous summer, in which we typically just ignore them and they don't eat much. 🤷‍♂️ We found taking steps to reduce shade and any wet areas anywhere near our plants helped a lot. We were not going to use any poisons or cups of beer either, so were thankful that it helped.

As for the tortoise, it was sad to read that it was the last of its species and has since died, but it must have been quite the adventure to get to visit the Galapagos islands. As a photographer, I would imagine you have quite a library of shots taken there to help with your memories of that adventure.

I have never seen a tortoise that I can recall. Plenty of turtles though. We have even stopped here and there, to help them across the road, when they clearly are not thinking clearly about what their chances are of surviving it on their own.