Description
Weeks after disappearing during a tornado, a pet tortoise is now reunited with its family.
“He’s been through a lot," Tiffany Emanuel said of her pet tortoise Myrtle. "I know that he knows just as much as I do that every step of the way I’m going to be there helping him, caring for him, making sure he gets, you know, the help that he needs.”
On March 15, a tornado ripped through the Tylertown and Kokomo, Miss. area. The Emanuel family fled their home to escape. When they returned, they discovered two pine trees had fallen on top of their tortoise's backyard home. The tortoise was nowhere to be found.
Weeks later, a neighbor found the injured tortoise. He was delivered to the Central Mississippi Turtle Rescue for medical treatment on April fourth.
"The lady who found the tortoise called me and she said she had run into the owners," Central Mississippi Turtle Rescue Founder and Co-Director Christy Milbourne said. "She said, 'I think they're going to be calling you.' So, I was excited, and then the owners did call and say, 'yeah, that's my tortoise.'"
Emanuel is now reunited with her tortoise and nursing him back to health.
"It feels good to kind of have some kind of happy out of so much sad and grief and loss," Emanuel said.