Escaped Pet Tortoise Found After Extensive Monthslong Search… 100 Feet Away

If you think that having a pet tortoise might be boring, imagine how dull it is for the tortoise. You can only get handed leaves in your terrarium so many times before ennui sets in, and how much fun can you have when half the time you’re awake you get mistaken for a rock? It’s enough to make you want to make a break for it and get out of this one-horse town, and when one Oklahoma tortoise was given a chance to take off like a bat out of hell, that’s exactly what it did.

KFOR reports that Piedmont, Oklahoma, resident Cherrie Zaidi has two African Spur Tortoises, Phineas and Ferb. Or make that had. She would take her pets outside and let them roam around because, and you might not know this, turtles and tortoises don’t have a reputation as being the most speedy animals in the world. She’d generally check on them every few hours, but this time, Zaidi said she got stuck on the phone, and the next thing you know, Ferb had crawled under the fence and taken off.

An extensive hunt took place to find Ferb once he’d escaped the yard in search of forbdden territories (or is that Ferb-idden terri-tortoise-ies?). Not only did Cherrie’s husband join in, but other residents of Piedmont did too, even using a drone to look for the lost animal. And while you might imagine that the search for a missing tortoise would be long and slow, they continued looking for over nine weeks, which was when Zaidi’s husband found a clump of grass in a field 100 feet behind their home. Once that clump of grass moved, he then realized it was their pet and it was rescued from the field. Ferb was reunited with Phineas and the rest of the family, Cherrie says she’s escape-proofing her yard, and everyone is living happily ever after – except for Ferb. 

“I’d had it all planned out,” Ferb said. “I’m an African Spur Tortoise, and I wanted to make it back to the motherland to visit my family. I was going to mail myself, but even tortoises are faster than the United States Postal Service, so as soon as one of my humans was distracted by a phone call, I knew that was my time to peace out. Aside from going home, there was this hare I know that kept challenging me to a race. At first I said no, but after escaping my human by pulling the old fence trick, I knew that I could slowly and steadily win that race.”

“I was on my way to the race as fast as I could make it,” Ferb continued, “but then I got to that field. I knew I wasn’t in Africa yet, but first I’d do the race, then I’d take my winnings and buy a plane ticket there. Either way, better things were on the horizon for me until that other human saw me and brought me back. So now I’m stuck back in Oklahoma of all places, but hey, I’m getting baths here, and three hots and a cot are better than being out in the wild, so I guess things aren’t so bad. I just wish Phineas didn’t tell on me. Nobody loves a turtle-tale.”