Houdini tortoise’s 35-day escapade (From Bucks Free Press)

Houdini tortoise’s 35-day escapade

1:43pm Friday 19th September 2008 in

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A TEARAWAY tortoise that escaped from its owners for five weeks did not get far on its slow-paced adventure, after it was discovered just 300 yards from home.

Sioux the roaming reptile made a bid for freedom on August 7 while out in her Bellingdon garden, but was miraculously found just two fields away wandering along a road.

After her 35-day escapade Sioux has now been safely returned to her shell-shocked owners, Alan and Brenda Thomas, who were worried they would never see her again.

Her adventure began when Alan, 66, took her for her daily walk down the garden.

Brenda, 67, said: “We have got an acre of gardens and it’s all hedges and tress and all enclosed, but it’s not enclosed to a tortoise.

“It had a little run but every day, more or less, my husband took it for walks down the garden, would you believe.”

Alan, a dad-of-two, added: “It was getting on for 4 o’clock, that’s about the time she usually turns in. I watched her go into a particular spot in the hedge, left her for no more than two minutes and went to collect her and she’d gone.

“Normally if she goes into a thicker part I find her by listening because you can hear her going through the rough grass.

“What I think she’d done is go to bed amongst the rough grass and I couldn’t find her. The following morning I started clearing away and couldn’t find her. She’d got through the fence into the next field and took nearly a month to cross it.”

The pair, who live off Chesham Road, searched and hunted all over for Sioux and put an advert in their village magazine to say she had disappeared.

On Friday (Sept 12), however Sioux was spotted by a motorist plodding along Two Gates Lane – a stone’s throw from her home.

Brenda said: “He’d heard through the village magazine that we’d lost a tortoise and he knocked on the door and said had we lost a tortoise?”

News of Sioux’s swift exit was kept from her previous owners, Brenda and Alan’s grandchildren twins James and Dani 13, and Jessica, ten.

“My daughter and my three grandchildren emigrated to Australia in January and they said would we take their tortoise to look after,” Brenda said, “We confessed we’d lost her to my daughter in Australia who didn’t tell the children, so when we did get it back it was wonderful. So she’s now obviously told the children the tortoise has been on an adventure.”

Sioux’s Houdini-like disappearances have been put to a stop now as she is being kept in the greenhouse to keep warm as she prepares to hibernate.