Love tames an unruly tortoise

How Nibbles stopped being a shell-suited hooligan

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Tortoises don’t have the most exciting reputation – most people think of them as slow, dull and boring, and certainly not the kind of pet you’d think of as troublesome. However, in my experience, tortoises can not only be really good and interesting pets, they can also be quite a handful.

Take Nibbles, an 18-year old male tortoise I saw many times at the surgery in Carterton, for example. He was a regular visitor to the surgery for years, and every time he came in, his owners had a different story to tell about his bad behaviour. Whether it was disappearing from the garden for days on end before reappearing as if nothing had happened, or devouring a flowerbed full of prized plants, he always seemed to be up to something. So, I was always interested to see Nibbles on my appointment list and see what he’d been up to this time.

On one particular occasion he was just booked in for a routine weighing and health check session, but while I checked him over, Mrs Lowe, his owner, started to tell me about his latest escapades.