"Irini" Steppe Tortoise, San Francisco

 

Irini is a 40 year old Steppe Tortoise originally from Russia. Her people have had her for 23 years. They said that Irini had been showing signs of looking for a place to hibernate for the winter. While left alone in her outdoor yard enclosure, Irini managed to push aside a heavy concrete block and wander up a steep dirt hillside in the yard and get through holes in the fence into the neighbor's yard. 

I brought Tacoma in to have him search the area since the vegetation was very thick and on a steep hillside in the Diamond Heights district. Irini's person kept their yard very well maintained and landscaped, but their neighbors did not and the trees and bushes were very overgrown and fences were either broken or missing on all sides. Very easy for a determined tortoise to get where she wants to go. 

What we found was that her scent did not leave the areas of the neighbor's yard to the right of their house. This house has extensive overgrown landscaping, untouched for years and even Tacoma at his tiny size, had problems getting through some of the sections. Plus the houses were built on very steep hillsides, making it more difficult to climb them, even in well maintained landscaping. 

Tacoma indicated that her scent had not left the neighbor's yard, which means two things: that Irini found her way to the yard and is hibernating, exactly what her person was afraid of, digging way below the surface of the earth. The second thing that could have happened, and we did talk about it  while on the search, was that Irini had become deceased while in the yard, and her remains carried away or decomposed and buried. This was a strong possibility with the extensive raccoon population in the area. Despite us being there in the late morning, we saw numerous raccoons awake and hanging out in the local trees. Irini's  person did confirm she had seen the raccoons in the neighbor's yard.