100 Year Old Tortoise Tries To Escape His Owners, But Is Found One Week Later a Mile Away After Traveling at a Blistering Speed of 0.006 MPH
A 100-year-old tortoise has been found a week after running away from home – having travelled one mile at an average speed of just 0.006mph.
Fred the tortoise was spotted making his way down a country lane by a passing motorist who picked him up after almost running him over in his car. The kind Samaritan took the 100-year-old reptile home before seeing an article in the local paper about him having gone missing amid fears he had been stolen.
The man then returned Fred to his owners Terry Phelps, 86 and his wife Sue, 73, who had been worried about him since he went missing 168 hours earlier. In that time he had made it just one mile from their home in Blackfield, near Southampton, Hants. When Fred went missing Mr and Mrs Phelps scoured the local area and recruited neighbours in their bid to find the slow-speed escapee.
They pushed numerous notes through letterboxes and got those living nearby to search their gardens, while staff at a nearby recreation centre promised to keep an eye out for Fred in their grounds.
I feel for this tortoise. He waited 100 years for his big escape. ONE. HUNDRED. YEARS. He planned it out like Gerard Butler in Law Abiding Citizen and he almost got away with it. His great escape bid ended after a week on the lamb when he was found a full one mile away from his home. Fred the Tortoise reached a top speed of 0.006 mph, which from a quick Google Images search appears to resemble something like this.
My dude is absolutely FLYING. It makes you think how anyone caught up to him in the first place. Fuck this old couple that ended up using their neighbors to go find Fred for them. If you’re old and dumb enough to let a tortoise out of your sight for a week then you don’t deserve to have him back. Put him in a zoo where he can be with his other tortoise friends and go buy a fish.
#FreeFred