Family heartbroken after 20-year-old tortoise escapes and goes on run

A family was shell-shocked after their large, 20-year-old tortoise escaped and went on the run.

Shelly the leopard tortoise scratched her way to freedom from the garden of the Phillips family and then legged it.

Incredibly, she was spotted making her way down a road twice by locals.

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But over a week later, the 40lb reptile is still on the loose despite extensive searches, including with thermal imaging.

Owner Becky Phillips, of Shillingford Abbot, near Exeter, Devon, said Shelly can shift.

“She’s quite big and can travel nearly a mile a day,” she told What’s The Jam.

“She’s been spotted twice.

“But it seems people don’t know what to do when they see a tortoise on the loose because she was just left there.

“We rehomed another tortoise the week before she went missing, so we had made her pen bigger.

“We think she escaped by clawing under the chicken wire of her pen.

“She then travelled all the way across our field into the neighbour’s field, across his field and dropped down into the lane below.

“Poor Shelly doesn’t hibernate either, so if she isn’t found, she’ll likely die.”

Becky’s dad, Nick Phillips, has offered a £200 reward if she is found.

He added: “She was spotted walking flat out, almost running up Weybrook Lane.

“We were there within half an hour looking and couldn’t see any sign of her.

“Subsequent to that, a friend, an acquaintance of ours, old chap, said, ‘Oh, your tortoise, I was driving down Weybrook Lane, there was a tortoise in the road, so I stopped and I put it on the verge’.”

“Where she’s gone now, we are not sure.”

The family and friends have been looking for the tortoise in verges, undergrowth and local woods, and using thermal imaging to try and spot her.

“The obvious worst scenario is that somebody has stopped, picked her up and driven off, but you just don’t know.

“This time of year, when they’re active, she’ll have like a whole lettuce, a couple of tomatoes, half a cucumber, watermelon and then they get a special tortoise mix as well,” he said.

“They would be eating pretty much whatever you put in front of them, so I don’t know quite how they get on out in the wild.”

Anyone who spots Shelly is asked to pick her up and put her in the boot of their car or stay with her and contact the family through their social media posts or by contacting the local police.

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