Gus' Big Adventure!

Hello, friends!

There are a lot of great things about having a pet. The unconditional love is great. Most pets are super cute. Really, it's mostly good stuff. However, there is one thing that makes having a "free range" pet difficult... there's always a chance they'll run away. 

Gus had quite the adventure last week. Tortoises are naturally exploratory animals. They love to walk around and find just the right spot to dig a little hole and burrow in for a nap. Honestly, it's pretty fun to watch. Because we have him in a relatively small enclosure inside (it's not tiny but I'm sure he wouldn't mind more space...) while the weather is nice, we've been letting him roam around outside for 15-30 minutes once or twice a day. He'll usually make his way towards the back of our yard and hole up until it's time to go back inside. You can tell he's not the happiest about going back inside because he never kicks his legs when we're holding him to take him outside but he's ALWAYS kicking his legs to try to escape our grip when we take him back inside.  

On Tuesday afternoon, Gus decided to go for an adventure during his time outside. I had my eyes on him (as normal) so there wasn't any big concern. Based on the surveillance footage from our doorbell camera, there were about 4 minutes when I wasn't watching him because I was talking to Megan and helping get Phoebe inside. During those 4 minutes, he made a break for it and when I went back to look for him, he was gone.  

Usually, he heads to the right, where there is plenty of chain link fence and high rock walls to keep him on our property. He'll try to climb up the rock walls but it's just too steep for him and we can keep tabs on him pretty well. However, the left side of our backyard has no chain link fence and a lower rock wall that is a little less steep. Guess which way he went on Tuesday...

As I was frantically looking around and calling his name (as if he'd actually come to me), I saw that he could have gone one of 3 ways. He could have made a break for the front yard. The gate was closed but maybe he found a hole and was out to explore the world. A second option was that he climbed the rock wall and was heading towards our neighbors. As I was looking around, I discovered a third option: there was a little hole underneath our shed from when we used to have a groundhog in the neighborhood and he could have burrowed under there. 

Megan thought that he was under the shed, so Tuesday night, while she took the kids to scouts, I took everything out of the shed and started tearing up the floorboards. 

Friends, this was a very delicate operation! On the one hand, I wanted to work quickly. On the other hand, I was swinging and axe at the floorboards. If Gus was under there, I didn't want to accidentally cut him in half. I was very tense with each swing. Eventually, it got too dark to see anything and I called it a night. Megan let all our neighbors know we were looking for Gus and I posted on Nextdoor before heading to bed, ready to take the next day off so I could finish the shed job. 

The next morning, before starting demolition again, I went to my neighbor with the fence and asked if I could poke around his backyard to see if I could find Gus. When I went back there, I knew I wouldn't have any luck. The grass was too high and there were too many places for Gus to hide. If he was back there, I wasn't going to find him. I had to hope that he was under the shed. 

I'll pause here and note how geography affects timing. My parents have a tortoise in California. He's an outdoor tortoise and sometimes they don't see him for a few weeks or a few months but they don't worry about it because they know he'll turn up. Why? Because they live in Southern California where it never gets below freezing. Tortoises aren't built for sub-freezing temperatures like we have in Nebraska in the winter. I knew that if we didn't find him Gus by November, our best hope is that he found a new home but what was more likely was that he froze to death. Not a great thought... 

Back to the shed. My friend from scouts offered to come over and help me tear up the rest of the shed floor, so we spent the rest of the morning doing that. We tore up everything but alas, there was no Gus. (we did find a possum skeleton though, so I guess that's something...) As a thank you, I offered to take him to lunch and since we finished right when Jonah finished preschool, He and Megan joined us for lunch. 

We were in the parking lot of the Chick-Fil-A, about to head home when Megan got a notification from our video doorbell. Our neighbor's granddaughter found Gus in their front yard and had brought him home!!! Even though looking in their backyard didn't yield any fruit, apparently telling my neighbor that Gus was missing was what we needed to bring him home! 

After making a fool of myself dancing in a Chick-Fil-A parking lot, we headed home to recover Gus. Both Megan and I gave him a stern talking talking to but we were happy he was home. Once we put him back in his box he started clawing at the walls. It's pretty obvious to me that he'd rather be outside, which makes me conflicted but for now, he's still with us. 

Luke 15 is Jesus telling a 3 parables about how great it is to find what is lost. The most famous of these parables is the Prodigal Son but after finding Gus, I now have a brand new appreciation for the parable of the woman and the lost coin. The woman swept the whole house to find her coin then celebrated with her friends. I tore up a shed floor to find Gus and when we found him, the family went to a pumpkin patch to celebrate. =0). 

Have an excellent day! 

~Adam