Another Texas story:

http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/9196663.htm

Posted on Tue, Jul. 20, 2004

Lost tortoise gets a quick lift home

By Shirley Jinkins, Star-Telegram Staff Writer

Olive the traveling tortoise is home, thanks to a kindhearted driver who spied her crossing Curt Lane in southwest Arlington. Olive's family, Paul and Frances Venable and their children, posted signs in the neighborhood and talked to the Star-Telegram last week in their quest to find their pet of 13 years. "She has a little bit of eye irritation, probably from walking through tall grass, but other than that she seems just fine," Frances Venable said Monday.

The rare desert tortoise escaped through a breach in the Venables' fence on July 8. Grant Morris spotted Olive about 5:30 p.m. Sunday as he was returning home from a game of disc golf at Veterans Park.

"He said it was really huge," reported Morris' mother-in-law, Sudhe Mahajan, who is visiting from Delhi, India. "He saw the sign and then the turtle, and then it hit him, 'Oh my God, that's the turtle!' "

Morris hustled the roaming reptile into his car and called the Venables, and Olive was home before dark.

"Olive ate some flowers this morning and drank some water," Venable said Monday. "She went right into her burrow and seems happy to be home."