It was a devastating tale many pet owners know all to well – a curious animal who disappears from their backyard, never to be seen again.
But the story of Martin the tortoise has a very happy ending.
Nearly a year after the tortoise disappeared from his home in Ontario, Canada, he was discovered just two blocks away.
Rachelle Green and her husband Daniel Kneblewski thought it was too good to be true when they received a call from the Oakville and Milton Humane Society.
Martin the tortoise has been returned to his home in Ontario, Canada nearly a year after he first went missing. And he was found only two blocks away from where he was last seen
‘It kind of shocked me since it had been such a long time,’ Green told the Toronto Star.
Green had canvased her neighborhood with flyers when Martin escaped under the couple’s backyard fence in July 2017 while she was gardening.
As the months went by she lost more and more hope, knowing it would be hard for him to survive in the harsh Canadian winter.
So Green couldn’t believe her luck when a woman from the shelter revealed that someone had turned in a tortoise the same size, sex, and breed as Martin.
And Green was only more surprised when she found out that the tortoise had been turned in by a man who was gardening at his home just two blocks down the road.
Green said she ‘became hysterical’ after she received the phone call and immediately drove to the shelter, trying not to get her hopes up.
But when she first saw the tortoise, Green’s heart sank.
Rachelle Green and her husband Daniel Kneblewski (pictured) thought it was too good to be true when they received a call from the Oakville and Milton Humane Society
He was bigger than she remembered, and there were white marks all over his shell. But further examination proved not all hope was lost.
‘I realized the white marks were scars from something trying to make a meal of him,’ she recalled.
And Green still ‘vividly remembered’ that Martin had a small birth defect on one of his shell sections.
When she turned him over, she saw the familiar scar – and burst into tears.
Green was crying so hard that she couldn’t even get out the words when she called her husband to tell him that Martin was finally back in her arms.
‘After 11 months of some sort of adventure that only Martin will ever know, his journey brought him home. If only he could talk!’ she said.
Green had canvased her neighborhood with flyers when Martin escaped under the couple’s backyard fence in July 2017 while she was gardening
Four days after she found Martin once again, Green got a phone call from the very man who had found the tortoise in his backyard.
The man revealed that he had taken Martin to the humane society to find out how to care and feed him, as his son had wanted to keep the tortoise.
But when the shelter realized that the tortoise was a perfect match to the one Green had lost, they immediately seized him and called her.
It was only after the man later shared the story with his friends at a local bar that he found out about the tale of Martin the missing tortoise.
Martin has since been reunited with the couple’s dog Scotch, who Green said was ‘bouncing back and forth in delight’ at the sight of the tortoise, and has met his new tortoise sister Martha.
And Green has installed a new fence, as well as a GPS tracking device on Martin, to make sure he never loses his way from home again.