‘Zuma’ hitches a ride to London tip

A PET owner was forced to rifle through 1 000 bags of rubbish when her 90-year-old tortoise hitched a lift in a rubbish truck and ended up at the tip.

Sarah Joiner contacted Westminster Council after realising “Zuma” was missing from his home in central London, believing he had crawled into a rubbish bag.

Using satellite tracking, the council tracked down the refuse truck to a waste treatment facility.

Luckily for Zuma the collection vehicle, carrying 10 tons of waste, had not yet tipped its waste into the massive storage bunker which processes thousands of tons of waste.

After dressing in protective clothing, Joiner and staff used a thermal imaging camera to hunt for the lost tortoise amid 1 000 bags of rubbish.

He was eventually found amid a pile of lettuce leaves and plucked to safety.