Can anyone help me find my anorexic pet tortoise?

Published on Monday 15 June 2009 10:01

THERE was certainly no need for an urgent search party when Susie Agnew's beloved pet Alfie went missing.

After all, even if he was making a dash for it, it seemed unlikely that a 20-year-old tortoise would have got far.

But with Alfie still AWOL six weeks on, she is growing increasingly worried – because he's also anorexic.

The six-inch-long tortoise has lived with Mrs Agnew for 18 years, and has never been able to hibernate because he doesn't have enough body weight to see him through the winter.

The fussy eater even spent several weeks at the Dick Vet hospital last year because of his anorexia, and on his return home Mrs Agnew had to feed him baby food through a tube to keep him alive.

Now she encourages him to eat by putting him under a heat lamp and giving him warm baths, both of which pep him up just enough to nibble a few of his favourite green leaves sprinkled with a nutritional supplement.

And Mrs Agnew, 57, is concerned that even if Archie has been found, his new owners will struggle to get him to eat.

She said: "We put him out in the garden and we've just got a new garden gate. It must be that slight bit higher than the last one and we think he squeezed underneath."

It's not the first time Alfie has escaped from his Marchmont home. Two years ago he disappeared and was found in a neighbour's garden.

Mrs Agnew, who is chairwoman of the Marchmont and Sciennes Community Council, said the only way out on that occasion would have been for him to scale a six-foot-high ivy-covered wall – he was later found to have a broken leg which he is thought to have sustained when he dropped to the ground on the other side.

Mrs Agnew has posted notices on lampposts and put leaflets through doors around her Palmerston Road home, but she fears Alfie may go unnoticed because of his habit of burrowing underground at night.

She said: "I've always had a thing about tortoises because my father and my uncle had them – my grandfather had brought them home from Burma, where he served with the army in the 1920s.

"So when my family saw Alfie in a pet shop they thought 'We've got to get that for mum'."

Anorexia may sound like an unlikely diagnosis for a tortoise, but exotic animal vet Kevin Eatwell of the Dick Vet explained: "Anorexia in animals just means they won't eat.

"One of the main things that makes tortoises anorexic is that they're ill, but equally their metabolic rate is governed by temperature and if they're kept too cold they won't eat."

Mrs Agnew is offering a reward for Alfie's safe return – contact her on [e-mail]