Natasha, the wandering Russian tortoise, is home, sleeping soundly in her hollowed-out log after enjoying a bath and a feast of Romaine lettuce.
Sandie Yeaman, left, couldn’t believe how many people volunteered to help find Natasha, the Russian tortoise that went missing for days. Friend Jodi Pilmeier is at right.
“I am so happy. I just cry,” owner Sandie Yeaman said Monday night.
Yeaman, along with throngs of volunteers who showed up from all over Omaha, Nebraska, had spent hours looking for Natasha. The tortoise had escaped her enclosure and yard Friday. Yeaman was terrified the tortoise would reach a nearby busy street.
Three times Natasha was apprehended, but she kept being returned to the small lake near her home by people thinking that’s where she belonged. But tortoises don’t live in the water like turtles.
“She was spotted twice at Spare Time Bowling at their back door,” Yeaman said. “I know she went there because it smelled good.”
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Friends Sondra Combs and Joyce Roll finally corralled her for good.
Combs decided on a whim to join the search after reading the many comments about Natasha on her neighborhood’s online app Monday after work. She called Roll and they headed to Lakeside Park.
Combs had asked herself, “What would a tortoise do?” before checking an inlet on the south side of the small lake. There was no sign of the tortoise until she headed back toward the road.
Natasha, lost since Friday, had lost weight. “She was a pretty chubby girl,” owner Sandie Yeaman said after the Russian tortoise was found Monday evening.
“There was a bush over to the side. There she was, plain as day,” Combs said. “She was eating a stem of something. She just looked at me.”
