- Manuela disappeared from her home in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1982
- Found when owners finally cleared out store room after father died
- Vet believes she survived by eating termites from the wooden floors
By MATT
ROPER
PUBLISHED: 10:33,
25 January 2013 | UPDATED: 14:43, 25 January 2013
A
family found their missing pet tortoise in a store room more than 30 years
after they lost her, it was reported today.
Manuela
disappeared from her home in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1982 and despite a
lengthy search was never seen again.
Her
owners, the Almeida family, assumed she had run away after builders working on
the house left the front door open.
It
was only after their father Leonel died earlier this month that the Almeida
children began clearing out a second-floor room which he had filled with broken
electrical items and always kept locked.
Leonel's
son, Leandro, said he was astonished to find Manuela alive inside a box
containing an old record player.
He
told Brazil's Globo G1 website said: 'I put the box on the pavement for the
rubbish men to collect, and a neighbour said, "you're not throwing out the
turtle as well are you?"
'I
looked and saw her. At that moment, I turned white, I just couldn't believe
what I was seeing.'
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment
You only need to enter your comment once! Comments will appear once they have been moderated. This is so as to stop the would-be comedian who has been spamming the comments here with inane and often offensive remarks. You know who you are!