When giant pet tortoises roam Miami suburbs, is there love in the air?
Usually, missing dogs and cats dominate the Nextdoor grapevine. But over Valentine’s Day weekend, two tortoises roaming Miami’s suburbs were found via the neighborhood network.
This is a story about the tortoise and the tortoise. No hare, just two large, lumbering tortoises who escaped from their owners’ backyards.
Because the pair, a male named Explorer and a female named Turtwig, were both struck with wanderlust on Valentine’s Day weekend, their owners believe it’s also destined to be a love story. A slow and steady romance, of course.
You see, the tortoises never managed to rendezvous during their separate suburban odysseys before they were found and returned home safely. But thanks to a flurry of messages on Nextdoor, the neighborhood social networking platform typically filled with posts about lost dogs and cats, there are now plans to have the tortoises meet on an arranged date.
“They went looking for love,” said Dr. Yuliya Linhares, an oncologist from Pinecrest whose family owns Explorer, an 8-yearold, 30-pound male. “Now that we have connected online, we want to have a tortoise meet and greet and mate party.”
Turtwig, named after a Pokemon character, is a 9-year-old, 23-inch long, 60-pound female who lives with a Coral Gables family.
“It’s mating season and love is in the air,” said Turtwig’s owner, Hedieh Sepehri. “It would be fun to give them a chance to socialize. This is the time of year they tend to escape. They get aggressive enough to break down fences and stomp right over them. Ours is like a tank. And they are much faster than you think. “
These are not small, shy, hide-in-the-shell turtles. The brown and yellowcolored sulcata, also known as the African spurred tortoise because of the pointed scales on its legs that look like a cowboy’s spurs, is the third-largest species of tortoise in the world, behind the islanddwelling Galapagos and Aldabra tortoises. Goliath, the 525-pound giant at Zoo Miami, is a Galapagos tortoise.
“They are living relics of the past,” said Zoo Miami spokesman Ron Magill.
The sulcata’s reptile lineage traces back 220 million years. In the wild, they can dig 40-foot deep burrows. They can grow up to 200 pounds and live up to 150 years. So they are driven by ancient urges, Magill said.
“These are nomadic creatures and tremendous diggers who can trek long distances,” he said. “Because they grow so big so quickly we often get calls from owners: ‘Hi, my sulcata was the size of my fist and now he’s the size of home plate. Can you please take him?’ But we have no place to put them at the zoo.”
Turtwig, so swift she once won a tortoise and turtle race at Miami’s Museum of Science, has escaped three times before, and Sepehri formed successful search parties. This time, word spread fast on Nextdoor.
Turtwig had walked about a half-mile until she was picked up while crossing Le Jeune Road by a concerned motorist who drove her to her house in Cocoplum, where another neighbor transported Turtwig to his house and was about to take her to a wildlife sanctuary when the niece of the motorist alerted her aunt to the string of posts on Nextdoor. Sepehri was phoned and brought Turtwig back to home sweet home.
“I guess she’s a true Miami girl and wanted to check out the mansions in Cocoplum,” Sepehri said. “In the Cocoplum group chat they were sharing the tale of Houdini the tortoise escape artist. These animals are very smart and curious.”
In lieu of a collar, Sepehri had written her phone number in nail polish on the underside of Turtwig’s carapace, but some of the digits had worn off.
Explorer, so named for his restless, inquisitive nature, took off this time when the back gate was left open. He was picked up a couple blocks from home, taken to a Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission office and returned by a ranger who was notified via the Nextdoor grapevine that the tortoise was a missing pet.
Explorer has a one-acre yard to roam but is an obsessive burrower, Linhares said.
“He’s dug under the fence and escaped several times. He knows where the road is. Sometimes he rams the fence until it breaks,” she said. “We also call him Tortoise Destructus because he has destroyed our garden. He grazes on our grass and we never have to mow the lawn.”
Explorer, who also eats lettuce and carrots, likes to hang out in the yard with the family’s four cats and three dogs. Their four chickens enjoy sunbathing on Explorer’s back.
Turtwig, a mere 3 inches long when Sepehri’s son Sami purchased her for $80 at the Snakes on Sunset pet shop, has devoured Sepehri’s passionfruit plants and toppled a papaya tree and regularly shoves patio furniture into the pool. She eats grass and salad mix and gets fed apples, green peppers, mango, banana and strawberries as treats.
“She once gobbled an azalea plant by mistake, got a stomachache and made a howling noise like you hear in dinosaur movies,” Sepehri said.
Turtwig co-exists with two cats, a dachshund and a Yorkie. She rarely burrows, unless a hurricane is approaching.
“She loves to stretch her neck out in the sunshine,” said Sepehri, who brings Turtwig inside when the temperature dips below 50.
“She’s learned how to sneak inside by pushing open the sliding door. Blink and she’s in the house. I’ve woken up to scratching noises under the bed. She’s too big to get under the bed now but she’ll move it and and try to crawl underneath. She used to go into our closet — and she would only poop on my husband’s shoes.”
While tortoises do not sit in your lap, fetch your slippers or like to have their bellies scratched, they do follow you around, their owners say, and take occasional affectionate pecks at your toes.
“My oldest son calls Explorer our family heirloom. We’ll pass him on to our great grandchildren as a constant pet who will be around for multiple generations,” Linhares said. “We’ve been through thick and thin with this guy. When he escaped, I could tell. I could feel his energy was missing. I had faith we’d find him.”
The wandering tortoises have acted as catalysts for neighborliness, “enabling us to get together and laugh about their escapades,” Sepehri said.
While searching for Explorer, Linhares met two other families in her neighborhood with tortoises, one with two girl tortoises. They’re also planning a tortoise party with Turtwig.
“A tortoise play date where they can make new friends,” Sepehri said. “But I don’t know if I could handle Turtwig having 15 babies at my house. She’s still growing. I can’t even pick her up anymore.”