Good Morning,

We live in Broadwater, Worthing, West sussex. A description of events and our tortoise follows:

Spike is our approximately 15 year old greek (golden /spur tortoise?) he was unsupervised yesterday (9/2/10) in his secure outdoor area of our garden for approximately 30minutes around 16:30-17:00hrs. He has access to our house from this area, but an inch by inch search has failed to find him either in the house or garden. We continue to search today while there is a chance we will find him basking somewhere open & warm.

So far, we have notified local vets and animal shelters, conducted door to door enquiries and placed posters around our local area. His disappearance is very difficult to explain given our garden security arrangements, so I feel it important to circulate this information as widely as possible.

We are desperate to get him back, he is a big part of the family and has been through so much in his life (we think he was illegally imported and not well looked after as a juvenile) he was adopted by us in very poor condition and we've spent the last 2.5 years nursing him back to good health, he is now thriving, gaining weight and had a very successful first hibernation with us this winter.

Please share this information with anybody who is able to help. We have photographs to aid identification (attached), he has only a couple of distinguishing features, but most prominent to a tortoise expert / breeder will be the smooth, regular shell, atypical of a captive bred tortoise. He has one claw missing from a rear leg and a small chip approximately 4-5mm on the top of his shell, 4th segment from the front.

We will continue the search, please get in contact should you have any information at all.

We offer a reward for the safe return of our beloved torty. I will post an update should he be found / returned in the meantime.

Thank you for taking the time to read this post. I know it is early hours / days, but this is a truly devastating loss for us already.

Hi there,

Sorry to hear your terrible news, I'm hoping your tortoise is back with you soon. The timing of his disappearence coincides with the time its started to get chilly in the last few days so heres hoping he's dug in somewhere. I have also dropped you n email with a couple of ideas.

Best wishes,

Dave.

Thanks Dave,
Have replied to your email, thank you for the advice.

We are pleased to report that Spike has been found, so this post can be removed or just ignored.

Thank you again to all who expressed concern and had helpful advice and tips, it all helped immensely and we certainly feel as a result we were able to do everything possible to get or Torty back quickly and safely.

That's great news - you must be over the moon:-)