Missing: Teri, age about 70, suffers from scaly gray skin and a calcium deficiency, likes to play dead. If found, please check pulse.
Steve Killgore last saw his beloved pet desert tortoise nearly two months ago when Teri apparently trudged south from her Woodland Hills home toward Calabasas. In desperation, he posted at least 50 "missing" signs all over the area with black-and-white photos of himself cradling what looked like a deflated football. So deep was the 35-year-old man's anguish, he even had his message flashed on a local cable TV channel.
It hasn't come to milk cartons yet, but he's close.
Killgore has received dozens of calls reporting wandering tortoise sightings from miles around, but none has produced his wrinkly Teri. The obsessed reptile owner has picked up two other domesticated strays in his hunt.
It's hard for Killgore, who thrives on stress every day as an air-traffic controller, to explain his bond with one of the planet's most boring animals.
Yes, it might look like a rock with eyes. OK, its brain could pass through a straw. And fine, it sits just a few rungs above an amoeba on the evolutionary ladder. But Killgore likes the thing and, after a rough day keeping planes from colliding, that's enough.
He still remembers the moment he met the tortoise, a wizened Yoda-like creature probably twice his age. His wife, Kathy, noticed it in September, ambling along Woodlake Avenue toward Burbank Boulevard, three blocks from their house. And then, one morning, it just showed up in their yard.
"My two dogs woke me up, barking like crazy and panting like 'Oh my God! The rock is moving,' " Killgore said.
He spent days trying to find the reptile's owner. He even went to a meeting of the local chapter of the Turtle and Tortoise Club, a conservation group. The club boasts 2,800 turtle lovers worldwide, and Killgore suddenly found he was not alone in his chelonian interests.
"Everybody in the club feels like they have a relationship with their turtle," said Vice President Carole Kramer. "It's not like a dog; they don't come when you call them over. It just gives you a thrill to see this ancient animal share its life with you."
Said Killgore: "This club even paid for one tortoise's medical bills when its leg was amputated. They considered buying it a skate to replace the leg, but it was doing OK."
Killgore learned from his turtle-loving buddies that because his tortoise had clearly been someone's pet, it could not be returned to the wild.
