Large Tortoise Turns Up in the Bronx

April 29, 2009, 3:46 pm — Updated: 12:37 am
By Jennifer 8. Lee

A 30-inch-long, 60-pound tortoise was discovered in the yard of a Bronx house when a woman came home on Tuesday.

City Room’s first thought was that perhaps this tortoise was among the animals that had been laid off by the Bronx Zoo because of recent cutbacks. While zoo officials had testified that the lemurs, oryxes and bats were going to be shipped off to other zoos and centers around the country, perhaps they were actually turning animals out on the street? After all, the house, which is on Harper Avenue in Baychester, is only about two miles from the zoo.

But that turned out not to be the case.

“That’s not our tortoise,” said Mary Dixon, a spokeswoman for the Wildlife Conservation Society, which runs the Bronx Zoo. “We do not have a missing tortoise”

If not from the Bronx Zoo, where did the tortoise — which is of a species indigenous to Africa — come from?

Richard P. Gentles, a spokesman for Animal Care and Control, which took control of the tortoise, said it was a sulcata tortoise, and the leading theory was that the tortoise was someone’s pet. The sulcata tortoise, which can weigh 100 pounds or more when grown, is a legal pet in New York. Perhaps someone had taken the tortoise out for a walk during the warm weather on Tuesday, and it had gone astray.

It is unlikely that the tortoise had been living by itself, Mr. Gentles said: “They are definitely not indigenous to this area. They definitely wouldn’t be able to survive cold weather.” Anything less than 75 or 85 degrees would be difficult for the tortoise. (Turtles, on the other hand, find the city more hospitable.)

But they don’t know where the owner is. “Nobody has come forward yet to claim: ‘We lost our tortoise. Do you have it?’ ” Mr. Gentles said on Wednesday afternoon. (By that evening, a man showed up claiming to be the tortoise’s owner. Animal Care and Control was trying to verify he was the owner, though reportedly the tortoise ran towards him like an eager dog.)

The tortoise was taken in and named Shelly by the workers at Animal Care and Control, which takes in about 40,000 cats and dogs each year. In addition, they take custody of about 3,600 other animals. Aside from the tortoise, other unusual animals include alligators, a tiger and monkeys.

Some are turned in by law enforcement officers, others by their owners, and some — like the tortoise — are stumbled upon by unsuspecting New Yorkers. The woman who found the tortoise was in the last category, Mr. Gentles said. “She was shocked. she had never been around a tortoise so big. She called us right away.”

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/29/large-tortoise-turns-up-in-the-bronx/