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Posted: 5th February 2013

Tortoise survives 30 years in storeroom
Image: Perla Rodrigues/TV Globo
Family pet rediscovered after three decades

A red-footed tortoise has been found alive in a locked storeroom box, 30 years after she went missing.

Manuela disappeared from her family home in Rio de Jeneiro, Brazil, in 1982, when her owners were having building work done in the house. Despite a lengthy search, the family assumed that the tortoise had crept out the front door, which had been left open by the builders.

Leandro Almeida and his sister Lenita, who had been given Manuela as a childhood pet, were astonished to come across the tortoise some three decades later when clearing out the old house, following the death of their father Leonel.

The siblings knew they had their work cut out when they came across their father's locked storeroom on the second floor that had been filled with broken electrical items.

"Everything my father thought he could fix, he picked up and brought home," Lenita explained. "If he found an old television he thought he might be able to use a part of it to fix another one in the future, so he just kept accumulating things. We never dared go inside that room."

Leandro was moving a box containing broken, dusty record player outside when the discovery was made.

"I put the box on the pavement for the rubbish men to collect and a neighbour said, 'You're not throwing out the tortoise as well are you?'. I looked and saw Manuela. At that moment I turned white. I just could not believe what I was seeing," recalled Leandro.

Local vet Jeferson Pires explained that the red-footed tortoise species is known to be particularly resilient and can survive for two to three years without food. He added that Manuela may have survived by eating termites from the wooden floor and finding condensation on smooth surfaces.

Lenita commented: "We're all thrilled to have Manuela back. But no one can understand how she managed to survive for 30 years in there, it's just unbelievable."



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