Shellshocked!
Riddle of tortoise missing for 2 years who turned up at owner’s old house... even though he never lived there
AFTER Arnie the pet tortoise had been missing for two years, his owners had given up all hope of finding him in one piece.
So the Bevans were amazed when they received a call to say he had been found just two miles away. And even more incredibly, Arnie was found at their old home in a nearby village, even though he had never lived there.
Sophie Bevan said: ‘We haven’t a clue where he’s been but the speed he goes he can’t have gone far! It is incredible our old neighbour found him as we haven’t lived there for 20 years.’
The 53-year-old and her husband Rupert, 52, had bought Arnie as a Christmas present for their daughter Tilda, now 20, eight years before the Macedonian tortoise went missing.
The mother of three said the family, including their other two children Orlando, 23, and Fabian, 18, searched all around their village of Middleton, Shropshire, after Arnie crawled off.
‘He disappeared when someone left the gate open,’ she said. ‘We desperately hunted for him and even asked our local farmer to keep a look out. But by the time winter had come and gone I just presumed he wouldn’t have made it.’
Then last week, Mr and Mrs Bevan, who run a furniture design firm together, received a call from Sue Millington, 60, their old neighbour in the village of Hopton Cangeford. Mrs Millington said a window cleaner spotted Arnie wandering up to the Bevans’ old front door and so she rang the family as she remembered they’d lost their pet, adding: ‘The strange thing is the tortoise never lived at this address but still made its way here – maybe it detected some old smell.’
Mrs Bevan said: ‘It’s a miracle that we have got him back. He was completely unscathed.’
The family identified Arnie by a small blob of green paint Tilda had put on his shell years ago. Mrs Bevan added that the family were all ‘thrilled’ and that Arnie has been treated to a bath – but the gate is now kept firmly shut.