Hi All,
This is a long shot but I'm looking for help from any sleuths who are good at spotting unique scute patterns and other features that might help ID my Russian tortoise (male, est age 15-20 years old) who has been missing for a few years. Back story: We lost our Hermanetta in upstate NY in the late summer of 2019, and after MUCH searching that fall, assumed he did not make it through the winter. (When he was younger we thought we had a female hence the name!) We were so mad at ourselves for leaving the door open that day. I never got a lot of closure so I would occasionally search the web for found tortoises in our area, and just recently could not believe my eyes when a post from November 2019 showed a small russian that looked like ours found right in our area and dropped off at a local vet. Since then, a good samaritan at that vet has helped me connect with the family who adopted the tortoise, and though we were mostly interested to know if it was our boy still alive (!!) and if he was in a loving home, the current owners expressed interest in rehoming him.
The problem -- It's near impossible to do a positive ID here. I never got a good photo of Hermanetta's plastron but have several of his carapace and patterns.
Any thoughts based on the photos below? The first three pictures are my tortoise (some are 5+ years old), the last three pictures are of the tortoise found locally. I see a couple scute patterns that look similiar, but the main thing that's hanging my up is the mystery tortoise has very faded black patterning. Can these patterns scuff off from a few months of heavy digging and traveling outside?
Last note is that we have a call out to the fellow who actually found the tortoise outside in the fall that year in order to know more precisely in what area of our city he was found. It's a critical piece to this puzzle but so far no luck reaching him.
THANK YOU for anyone who reads this and is willing to give their thoughts!
This is a long shot but I'm looking for help from any sleuths who are good at spotting unique scute patterns and other features that might help ID my Russian tortoise (male, est age 15-20 years old) who has been missing for a few years. Back story: We lost our Hermanetta in upstate NY in the late summer of 2019, and after MUCH searching that fall, assumed he did not make it through the winter. (When he was younger we thought we had a female hence the name!) We were so mad at ourselves for leaving the door open that day. I never got a lot of closure so I would occasionally search the web for found tortoises in our area, and just recently could not believe my eyes when a post from November 2019 showed a small russian that looked like ours found right in our area and dropped off at a local vet. Since then, a good samaritan at that vet has helped me connect with the family who adopted the tortoise, and though we were mostly interested to know if it was our boy still alive (!!) and if he was in a loving home, the current owners expressed interest in rehoming him.
The problem -- It's near impossible to do a positive ID here. I never got a good photo of Hermanetta's plastron but have several of his carapace and patterns.
Any thoughts based on the photos below? The first three pictures are my tortoise (some are 5+ years old), the last three pictures are of the tortoise found locally. I see a couple scute patterns that look similiar, but the main thing that's hanging my up is the mystery tortoise has very faded black patterning. Can these patterns scuff off from a few months of heavy digging and traveling outside?
Last note is that we have a call out to the fellow who actually found the tortoise outside in the fall that year in order to know more precisely in what area of our city he was found. It's a critical piece to this puzzle but so far no luck reaching him.
THANK YOU for anyone who reads this and is willing to give their thoughts!
