Tortoise back with owner after 11 months. He made it 2 blocks
Martin the tortoise just wrote his own children’s storybook.
The tortoise — missing from his Oakville home for almost a year — was reunited with his owners Rachelle Green and her husband Daniel Kneblewski.
Green, who plastered the town with flyers when her beloved pet escaped under her backyard fence on July 11, 2017, while she was gardening, said she got a phone call from the Oakville and Milton Humane Society, asking whether Martin had ever been found.
Turns out he was, just two blocks away.
“It kind of shocked me since it had been such a long time,” she said.
The woman told her that someone had brought in a tortoise that was the same size, sex and possibly a Hermann breed, which is what Martin was.
“I thought that they wanted me to adopt this tortoise, until she told me that he was found by a man gardening about two blocks down the road from where we live,” she said.
Mid-afternoon and at work, Green said she became hysterical and immediately drove home from Mississauga where she works for an electrical contractor in project management.
“I tried not to get my hopes up too high as I drove to the humane society,” she said, adding the drive was a bit of a blur.
When she arrived, she was taken to a room where the tortoise had been placed in a small aquarium.
“I didn’t wait for help to pull this tortoise out from hiding under a stack of newspaper,” she said.
Upon first inspection, she didn’t think it was Martin — he was bigger, had white marks on his shell and was a dark orange colour.
“My heart sank, but I began to examine him and realized the white marks were scars from something trying to make a meal of him,” she said.
One of Martin’s shell sections had a small birth defect, and as she looked him over, she saw that first old scar in his shell and she burst into tears, realizing this was indeed Martin.
“I vividly remembered certain markings that only my little Martin had,” she said.
“After 11 months of some sort of adventure that only Martin will ever know, his journey brought him home. If only he could talk!” After she got home, she phoned her husband to tell him the wonderful news, but couldn’t get the words out, she was crying so hard. All she managed to get out was “can you come home?”
“He left work, thinking something terrible had happened,” she said, explaining that Martin was extra special because it was the first pet she and her husband had gotten together.
Green said she had a phone call from a gentleman, four days after her reunion with Martin. He was the man who had dropped Martin at the humane society. He told her he found Martin while he was gardening in his backyard — the same scenario as when the inquisitive tortoise disappeared. The man’s son had wanted to keep the tortoise, but when he took Martin to the humane society for advice on feeding and care, they immediately seized him.
He shared the story with friends at a neighbourhood bar and Green said that’s when folks told him the story of Martin. The man then phoned Green, whose number was listed on the flyers that had been distributed during their lengthy search. The Oakville Beaver had also written a story about the missing tortoise.
Martin now has a little sister, Martha, and their dog Scotch could not be happier that he is home as well, bouncing back and forth in delight when they were reunited.
Green said she had scoured Kijiji every day for months following Martin’s disappearance, searching for someone, who maybe wanted to sell him. That’s how Martha came to be — she was for sale on the popular website, and Green — in the back of her mind — figured that Martin wouldn’t survive a harsh Canadian winter.
Green said she and her spouse had searched the neighbourhood for months. Initial reports when he first went missing stated that a man had been seen scooping him up from the lawn of his Bridge Road home, and apparently headed to the lake to release him. Unfortunately, Martin can’t swim, since he’s a desert tortoise.
She theorizes that Martin managed to stay warm this past winter, perhaps under someone’s deck, close to a heating source, where he would have hibernated until the warmth of spring hit.