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Local celebrity tortoise goes on romantic journey

Gertie, an endangered Bolson tortoise, is shown to a group of state and federal wildlife officials during a trip to Ted Turner's Armendaris Ranch in Engle, N.M., on Friday, Sept. 22, 2023. The Turner Endangered Species Fund has been working to build a population of the tortoises for more than two decades in hopes of one day releasing them into the wild as part of a recovery effort. (AP Photo/Susan Montoya Bryan) (Susan Montoya Bryan, Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)

WALLER – Thirty-year-old Jeremy the tortoise is well-known online.

His viral antics include frequent escape attempts from Blue Heron Farm in Waller. His owners adopted him last year to grace their petting zoo and beer garden, but Jeremy proved to be more itinerant than they’d bargained for.

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The 90-pound African spurred tortoise went missing so frequently that his owners were forced to put an Apple Air Tag on him to track his movements.

But around 5 p.m. on Wednesday, Jeremy’s owners posted that the tortoise was once again lost, and they were not getting ANY hits on his Air Tag.

“We’ve put him in lost mode,” the post said.

While Jeremy is known for sneaking off the farm, his owners were worried that Jeremy may have been taken.

It turned out to be a little bit of both.

Jeremy did indeed wander off the Waller farm -- and was picked up by a concerned citizen who took him to his OWN tortoise farm a mile away. Jeremy’s owners were able to track down his location Thursday using social media, but by the time they arrived, Jeremy had become romantically entangled with a female tortoise.

When a user asked if Jeremy was perhaps roaming in search of a mate, his owners replied, “Was not out looking for a girlfriend, he just got lucky and found one where they took him.”

What is love if not a game of luck?

His owners say they’ll be picking him up and bringing him home once his romantic rendezvous is over. It also turns out their location is too rural for the Air Tag to be of any use.

“We’re just going to put a dog tag with our phone number on his shell next,” they posted.


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