'Out on the town’: 200-pound tortoise safe after slipping away from Alabama pen

SARDIS CITY, Ala. — After stepping out for a few days, a 200-pound tortoise that escaped from his enclosure in an Alabama town is safe and sound.

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“He had a couple of days out on the town,” Ty Harris, of Sardis City, said about Sparkplug, who pushed his way out of his pen on Thursday, The Gadsden Times reported.

The African spurred tortoise was returned by a man who found him Thursday on the roadside in Sardis City, the Times reported. He took the tortoise to his property in South Sauty and set the animal free.

However, after Harris posted on social media about the missing tortoise, the man contacted him and they began to look for Sparkplug.

Harris and his family members passed out flyers and began tracking Sparkplug on Friday, the newspaper reported. The man who originally found Sparkplug found him again Saturday and returned him to the Harris family, the Times reported.

“He just headed back to his home,” Harris told the newspaper, remembering the anxiety he felt when he saw that Sparkplug had escaped several days earlier.

“I went out and saw that fence and thought, ‘Yep, it’s 2020,’” Harris told the Times.


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