After 15 days seeking ‘greener grass,’ Squirt the tortoise reunited with Modesto owner
Squirt has returned home.
The nearly 12-year-old tortoise escaped his Modesto yard March 26, leaving his owner distraught.
Rebecca Goulet said she spread flyers around town, posted in social media groups and called shelters, rescue centers and emergency veterinarians. She asked neighbors to check camera footage and followed multiple leads that turned out to be dead ends, including a ceramic tortoise a passerby mistook for the real reptile.
Then, on April 10, Goulet got a text. A family believed it had her tortoise.
“I was really leery at first,” she said.
She had received scams and prank texts since she posted flyers advertising a reward for Squirt’s return, she said. To confirm this one was real, Goulet requested a photo.
“I was like, ‘Oh, my god, that’s him!’ ” she recalled.
She asked for one more photo, to be sure. Squirt has a “funky looking shell” near his back that could help Goulet distinguish him, she said. The photo matched.
Squirt was dropped off the next day, exchanged for $500, Goulet said. The family told her it bought Squirt from someone in Escalon, but the details seemed vague, Goulet said.
When Goulet and Squirt reunited, she checked his body for injuries and inspected a cyst he’s had on his chin. “He seemed healthy,” Goulet said.
Squirt isolated in his heated box for the first 24 hours, Goulet said. She thinks he had been cold during his travels.
But the next day, he was back out in the yard, eating and roaming around.
“Life kind of went back to normal,” Goulet said.
Multiple tortoise escapes
Tortoises commonly escape around this time of year because of the warm weather and the end of their hibernation, said Jennifer Perez, president and founder of the Cali_FID Parrot and Exotic Rescue Sanctuary in Modesto.
When Squirt was on the loose, Perez told The Bee she knew of four tortoises missing in Stanislaus County. Her sanctuary is the only one in the Modesto area that accepts tortoises, she said.
Tortoises escape because they’re natural grazers, Perez said. “They’re always looking for the greener grass,” she said. Many tortoises are native to Africa and would walk for miles if they could explore, she said. “They’re basically wild animals.”
Squirt escaped after a side gate to her backyard was mistakenly left unlatched, Goulet said. She encourages people not to assume an animal they’ve found has been abandoned or neglected.
“It could very well be someone’s pet,” she said.
This story was originally published April 20, 2022 at 7:00 AM.
