The Incredible Journey

Remember the Disney movie about the two dogs and a cat that travel on the space shuttle to the moon to find their family...oops wrong movie. I meant the movie where the animals travel across the country to get reunited with their family. I don't remember why they got left behind. Maybe it wasn't a mistake after all. I guess that didn't occur to the misplaced pets. I can just imagine the shock on the faces of the family when they opened the door and there are the pets that they thought they ditched a couple months ago. "Cripes - they found us!" Anyway we had our own Incredible Journey moment yesterday. Mary and Craig took the refugee tortoise to the pet shop to get the skinny about it. The pet shop man (wonder if he had been part of that rock group Pet Shop Boys but had to drop out when he grew up?) told them that it was a Russian Tortoise and that they are vegans. Why am I not surprised that tortoises in SoCal are vegans? Anyway by the cash register was a sign - "Missing: Russian Tortoise" with a phone number. What are the odds? So, Mary called and the lady on the other end of the phone was ecstatic that we had found her 'little guy'. Problem is that she lives several miles away and there are two 4 lane high speed traffic roads between us and them. The tortoise had to cover about 3 miles in 5 days. He has these stumpy little legs and a body that is definitely not streamlined. Anyway the husband of the lady we talked to showed up to examine the creature and swore that it looked just like his missing tortoise. Craig was pretty skeptical about letting it go - what if the guy was secretly running a Russian Tortoise ring - grabbing helpless little Ivans and Shashas to turn them into some dining delicacy for warped culinary fetishists? I on the other hand was moved close to tears when he mentioned that the other two tortoises at his house were sad that their buddy had broken out and left them behind. I didn't think until later: how do you know when a tortoise is sad? I handed the tortoise over to him and wished him all the best. We even supplied a shoe box for him to carry the hard-shelled little communist in. Funny though, as they left I heard this tiny little voice saying 'Help me Comrade - don't let him take me!" Wonder what that was all about?