Emanuel and her fiancé, Adam Guidry, pick up Myrtle from Central Mississippi Turtle Rescue. Photo / Central Mississippi Turtle Rescue
Emanuel and her fiancé, Adam Guidry, pick up Myrtle from Central Mississippi Turtle Rescue. Photo / Central Mississippi Turtle Rescue
When Tiffany Emanuel heard a tornado was approaching her home in Kokomo, Mississippi, she and her family ran out of the house. They were gutted to leave their pets behind.
“We had no time to do anything. We only had time to grab the kids and head in the truck right away,” said Emanuel, explaining that they have five dogs, four cats, two goats, several pigs and chickens, plus two tortoises. “It was literally hitting in minutes.”
Powerful storms and winds brought 18 tornadoes ripping through Mississippi on March 14 and 15, killing seven people and injuring dozens. Hundreds of homes and businesses were wrecked.
That evening, on March 15, when Emanuel and her family returned home, they were thankful they’d made it to safety, and that their home was intact. All their pets were accounted for and safe - except their 8-year-old tortoise, Myrtle.
“I was panicked,” said Emanuel, adding that she felt terrible for leaving him behind. While their home was not damaged by the tornado, Myrtle’s backyard dwelling was crushed by a fallen tree.
“We didn’t realise he was missing until we were able to get all of the debris off his house,” Emanuel said. “It was definitely a scary moment.”
She, her fiancé and their three children spent the following few days searching their 21ha property for Myrtle, an African spurred tortoise who weighs about 9kg. He was nowhere to be found.
“It was very heartbreaking,” said Emanuel, who got Myrtle when he was 6 from a pet store.
Emanuel has always had a love of tortoises, she said, and whenever she would find tiny turtles in her yard, she would admire them and care for them if they appeared in distress. She had long wanted one as a pet, and she felt a bond with Myrtle immediately.
“It was instant,” she said.
Even though Myrtle is traditionally a feminine name, Emanuel and her family thought “Myrtle the turtle” had a nice ring to it.
Myrtle spent most of his time living inside Emanuel’s home, though in the spring and summer, he would often stay outside in a heated enclosure they set up for him.
“He had whatever he wanted back there,” Emanuel said.
After several weeks had passed with no sign of Myrtle, Emanuel felt increasingly certain that he was gone for good. She was devastated thinking about what might have happened to him.
Emanuel said she is relieved to have Myrtle home. Photo / Tiffany Emanuel
Then on April 7, when she was shopping at a local general store, a woman who works there asked Emanuel if she was missing a tortoise.
“She figured she would ask if it was mine because she knew I had all kinds of animals,” Emanuel said.
“She showed me a picture of him, and I was like, ‘oh my gosh, that’s Myrtle,’ ” Emanuel said, explaining that people in the community were posting about Myrtle on Facebook, searching for his owner, but since she seldom uses social media, she hadn’t seen the posts.
Emanuel learned that another local woman found Myrtle on the side of a road a few days earlier about 1.6km from Emanuel’s home.
“When she saw him, she thought he was a piece of clay mud,” Emanuel said.
The woman brought Myrtle home and got in touch with Central Mississippi Turtle Rescue Center in Florence, about two hours north of where Emanuel lives. The rescue agreed to take in the stray and injured turtle.
“The person who found him couldn’t bring him all the way here, so we put it out on our Facebook page and asked if anyone would be able to transport him,” said Christy Milbourne, the founder of the rescue. Quickly, someone offered to do the drive.
“We have some wonderful, wonderful fans of the organisation that will drop what they’re doing and bring turtles to us,” Milbourne said.
When Myrtle arrived at the rescue, it was clear he had been through an ordeal. He had several injuries, Milbourne said, including a broken shell.
Myrtle at Central Mississippi Turtle Rescue in Florence. Photo / Central Mississippi Turtle Rescue
“We had to put that back into place and stabilise it so it would heal correctly,” Milbourne said, noting that she also gave him pain medication and antibiotics.
Milbourne explained that finding stray pet turtles is more common than people might think.
“They are escape artists,” Milbourne said. “They don’t stay anywhere they don’t want to stay.”
She has a theory of Myrtle’s escape.
“He either got picked up by those winds and tossed, or he managed to walk out after the tornado took down their fence,” she said, adding that Myrtle probably kept himself alive by eating grass and weeds while he was on the run.
“He probably had plenty of access to food,” she said.
As soon as Emanuel found out from the store clerk that Myrtle had been found and was taken to a rescue, her fiancé called Central Mississippi Turtle Rescue Center. They sent Milbourne photos of Myrtle to verify that he was theirs, and they went to pick him up that day.
“He was just as happy to see me as I was to see him,” Emanuel said, explaining that Myrtle came out of his shell as soon as she arrived. “When I grabbed him, he immediately came out.”
Myrtle’s injuries are being monitored, Emanuel said, adding that she has been taking him regularly to their local vet for checkups.
“Now he’s moving around and acting like his old self again,” Emanuel said.
Myrtle seems most comfortable with her, she said, and rarely comes out of his shell around strangers.
“He knows me, and he knows how I hold him,” she said. “He is very sweet.”
Myrtle snacks on lettuce. Photo / Tiffany Emanuel
Whenever Emanuel enters Myrtle’s pen, she said, he will crawl over to her and sit on her lap like a dog. His favourite snack is celery, and he loves to be scratched under his chin.
