SKAGIT VALLEY HERALD (Mount Vernon, Washington) 31 May 04 This tale of the missing turtle has happy ending
A box turtle that ran wild for an entire year in the Skagit flats has been returned home.
The turtle, whose name is Peace, was found during a party a few weeks ago at the home of Barb and Greg Ingman. Their 15-year-old son and his friends discovered Peace while playing with paintball guns in a nearby patch of woods.
Peace had pneumonia and a fungus, Barb said, but her husband, a veterinarian, nursed the small turtle back to health.
"It's kind of amazing that he survived," she said. "To me it was funny that he ended up here. He comes to a vet's house."
Barb told the story to a sixth-grade class she taught as a substitute teacher for a day at Edison Elementary. One of the students, Taylor Brock, mentioned that her 10-year-old sister lost a box turtle a year ago and Barb's jaw dropped.
The Brocks live on the other side of the woods from the Ingmans.
Peace had wandered off on Mother's Day 2003, while his owner, Carly Brock, and her mother, Denise, cleaned his cage.
"He was out in the bushes resting," Carly said. "When I went back and checked on him, he wasn't there."
They searched high and low but didn't find the turtle, who is at least 10 years old, they said.
Unusually energetic for a turtle, Peace inherited his name from the screen atop the tank that came with him. Although his previous owner called him something like "Yertle," Denise said, it seems somebody else had scrawled the word "Peace" on the screen.
The Brocks kept the terrarium empty while Peace was gone. Denise said she kept expecting to find him somewhere, but didn't imagine he would have traveled as far as he did.
Now that he's back, Carly still lets Peace scamper around the yard, but keeps a closer eye on him.
"My dad said to tape a nickel to him," she said. That way, if they lose sight of him again, they can find him with a metal detector.
This tale of the missing turtle has happy ending

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