It took only 15 minutes for the owners of 31-year-old tortoise Sheldon to notice that he had broken through the fence of their residence in the unincorporated Santa Clara County community of Coyote and escaped. But by the time they made it outside, he had disappeared.
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A week and a half later, Sheldon is still missing – and his family is asking anyone who spots the tortoise to help them bring him home.
“When you take on a pet like a tortoise, you have to set up almost like a will for him because a tortoise is a lifelong commitment for everybody. The tortoise will probably outlive me,” said Sheldon’s owner Chris Alton, 30. “We were planning on keeping Sheldon for the rest of our lives, essentially. So of course the tortoise means a whole lot to all of us – he’s the family pet.”
Tortoises can travel about a mile to two per day, at times moving as quickly as a human’s walking speed, Alton said. They may move faster if motivated by something interesting, like food.
The challenge of finding Sheldon is amplified because he does not have a microchip like many other family pets do, as the vet Alton took him to did not have the resources or ability to chip a tortoise, he added.
Sheldon is not the first tortoise to venture out onto Bay Area streets in recent weeks. A 40-pound tortoise named Bernie stopped traffic in Orinda earlier this month.
After Sheldon left his home around 1:30 p.m. on Aug. 14, a woman spotted him walking near the Coyote Post Office on Monterey Road, Alton said. She reported the sighting to a ranger down the street, who drove over and saw him on the other side of the road. By the time he made a U-turn to get him, the tortoise had disappeared.
“He seems to think someone picked up the tortoise,” Alton said, as that would be pretty fast for the animal to disappear from sight.
Alton has spent hours out searching for his beloved pet since he disappeared, even trekking out with a flashlight some nights after getting home from work around midnight.
“I’ve tracked through creeks, I’ve tracked through all of the brush,” he said. “It’s a pretty rural area over there, but I’ve been through all of it. Many hours, many days. No luck.”
There have been other tortoise sightings in the area since Sheldon disappeared, but none of these have been Sheldon, Alton said. He can tell because Sheldon’s tusks, located under his neck, were trimmed down by a vet.
Alton added that Sheldon, who weighs about 80 pounds, does not burrow like other tortoises because he built him an insulated house with a heater to go in at night.
“I’m just worried that he’s either cold or, they drink a lot of water, so he’s probably looking for a water source,” Alton said.
Sheldon eats orchard hay as the bulk of his diet and also loves watermelon, Alton added.
Anyone who has spotted Sheldon or may have a lead to his whereabouts should contact Alton at 408-833-3061.
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“We’ve had him six, seven years now,” Alton added. “We miss Sheldon a lot.”
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