Leonardo the tortoise – credit, Rachel Etches

In the ancient English region of Cumbria, a woman discovered to her great surprise that Leonardo, her pet tortoise, had fled her house in Ulverston.

Rachel Etches will occasionally allow Leonardo to wander around the garden lawn to his great enjoyment. Despite being far from a sprinter, it only took one lapse of concentration for one such play date to go terribly awry.

Escaping, Leonardo began a 9-month trip around town right as winter was approaching. Etches set up a social media campaign to try and recruit help in locating her reptile before the temperatures plummeted and the cold-blooded creature froze.

But after the spring thaw, a dog walker noticed him ambling down the street, proving him capable of facing the North English winter, of finding food, and avoiding predators like rowdy shepherd dogs.

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“He’s gone on his travels around our little hamlet and he was found about a mile from our house. It was totally my fault, we were out in the garden, we’d just had our second child, I got a bit distracted and he just wandered off out of our sight,” Etches told the BBC.

“He’s led a very comfortable life for 13 years under a heat lamp in my house, so we didn’t think he was going to survive the winter being out for the first time.”

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