Yahoo! News: Runaway Turtle Travels 3 Miles in 3 Months
LONDON - Herman the tortoise is more than 30 years old, but she can still cut a dash. The female tortoise has just been returned home after a rushing three miles across country in a little over three months, her owners said Wednesday.
"It is great to have her back," said owner Ken Swanston, 62, a retired fisherman from West Lilburn, near Alnwick in northeast England.
"Herman escaped from a hole in the garden fence when we were away on holiday at the end of May. We hunted high and low looking for her but we never found her and we even reported her missing to the police."
Herman's journey ended when a mailman found her on Amerside Moor, near Wooler, last week.
Herman — so named because she is a Herman tortoise — lives with four spur thigh tortoises, three females called Big Un, Hole in Shell and Lawnmower, and a male called Rambo, in a greenhouse in the Swanstons' garden. All five are in their 30s and have been together for the past 28 years.
Lisa Bolton, who runs the Wildlife In Need rescue center at Chatton, near Alnwick, where Herman was taken first, said the tortoise would have faced dangers including cars, combine harvesters, hungry foxes, badgers, stoats, weasels and even rats.
"Three miles is quite some distance to travel and for a tortoise it is a very long way," she said.
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