The tortoise has been trying to escape for more than 50 years

A reader writes, asking how I can let my tortoise roam free in my back garden. She'd like to do the same with her adopted tortoise, but is worried it will escape.

- Tim Dowling

I explain that my garden is bounded by high brick walls, safely sealing the tortoise in, but that I too am consumed by fear that he will escape. He’s very good at hiding, and this always strikes me as a strategy: wait until they think you’ve already gone, and their guard will drop.

Also, he has form: my wife was eight years old when she got the tortoise. After her parents separated he went to live in the country with her father, and promptly escaped. He stayed missing for two years, until a farmer found him while combining in a field. For 20 years the tortoise lived in a pen with the farmer’s sheepdogs, with a white stripe painted on his back to make him easier to spot whenever he got out.

At some point in the 1990s, the tortoise was returned to my father-in-law, who very quickly returned him to my wife. That was nearly 30 years ago, which can make the end result feel like destiny, although probably not from the tortoise’s point of view. To him it’s just one foiled escape attempt after another.