I don’t know how in this earthly world it’s possible that a pet tortoise could turn up missing, and yet here we are.
A 109-year-old pet tortoise named Toby went missing last May for nearly a year, reports Kent Online. 74-year-old Wendy Stokes (significantly younger than the poor fella) reports that she was heartbroken when her companion crawled away after she’d accidentally left the gate open. Despite her best efforts to locate him, the critter remained missing until recently, when he turned up on the side of a country road. Because the name Stokes was painted on his shell as a precaution should anything like this ever occur, rescuers were able to locate Wendy and reunite the two.
“I was devastated when he went missing and spent weeks looking for him in all the fields around the farm,” she told Kent Online. “It is brilliant having him back and I think everybody was keeping their eye out for him all this time.”
So it appears that old metaphor about the tortoise and the hare is a bit of a misnomer, and that our suspicions about these shelled critters are a tad misguided. Perhaps they’ve been much faster than we thought all along!
If you have an animal companion you’d be lost without, please SHARE this heartwarming reunion story!
