BOSTON GLOBE (Massachusetts) 13 August 06 A pet pulls a slow one on his owner (Douglas Belkin)
The worst-case scenario was that the runaway headed south, across Route 16, which is just two houses down from where Dawn Ciulla lives in Medford.
On Tuesday night that thought made the usually optimistic Ciulla wince. Route 16 means traffic, big tires, loud horns, heavy cars. Enough rubber and steel to crush even a tough critter like Houdini and leave him scattered along the road in pieces.
And if, by some miracle, her pet made it safely across the road, he'd probably hug the curb on the other side until he hit a sewer. Then, poof, a long drop down and no way out. The end.
``No way," Ciulla said, shaking her head. ``That's not what happened. I don't believe it."
Houdini is Ciulla's Russian tortoise. He's 20 years old, about the length of a Penguin paperback and half as high as a beer can. He weighs maybe half a pound.
Houdini is also Ciulla's very good friend. Her baby. Her companion since senior year at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, when she inherited him from a pal. So when he disappeared last week, the panicked signs went up in a hurry all around Medford: ``Missing, Russian Tortoise, Escaped, Reward."
``I'm terrified," Ciulla said Tuesday night, her eyes beginning to tear. ``I wake up in the middle of the night and think, `Where is he? What happened?' "
For six years Ciulla has gently scrubbed her ``little buddy's" face with a soft bristled toothbrush to get the remains of his dinner off his tiny brown snout. She has tenderly cut his tortoise nails with dog-nail clippers and patiently rubbed mineral oil on his hard brown shell to keep it healthy and glistening. Once a week she filled the tub with 2 inches of water and gave him a bath.
This is no ordinary tortoise, Ciulla said. He recognizes her voice. He eats from her hand. When she tells him she loves him, she's pretty sure he understands.
``He's very funny to watch," said Ciulla's mother, Linda. ``Just the way he waddles across the floor."
Ciulla, 28, has a master's degree in microbiology and works as a technical research assistant in a lab at Brigham and Women's Hospital. She lives with her parents in the same two-family home where she was raised.
In the hallway of her second floor apartment, she built Houdini a 3-foot-square tortoise palace. There is a sunlamp above, a heating pad below. And inside, a half-foot of sand, a cardboard hutch, and a tortoise-size tree stump to burrow beneath.
For six years, Ciulla never let Houdini out of the sandbox where he slept, unless he was wandering around her bedroom -- door closed. For a special treat he might get to explore the apartment.
But two weeks ago, a veterinarian who specializes in exotic animals, an expert in tortoise care, told Ciulla he let his tortoises out all summer long.
``He said he'd only ever lost one," Ciulla said. ``I said, `But one is all I have.' "
Nevertheless, against her better judgment, she let Houdini outside on Aug. 2 in the enclosed backyard garden where her father's tomatoes and eggplants grow. Before going off to work she picked him up to say goodbye while he munched on some lettuce. ``He looked at me like, `Please, you're interrupting my breakfast,' " she said.
That night, when she returned from work, Houdini was gone.
The first 24 hours, she forced herself to remain calm. Maybe he had just burrowed in somewhere and he was going to come out, she thought. The second day she panicked. She left work early, took a chainsaw to the overgrown bushes in the backyard, and mowed them down. No Houdini.
She stapled 100 fliers around town. No Houdini. She went house to house, asking if anyone saw a small brown tortoise in their yard. Still, no Houdini.
The tortoise had disappeared before, hence his name. But never like this. And never outside.
Ciulla's mind reeled. In the great wide world there are hawks and dogs, motorcycles and moving vans, none of them very good for scared and tiny tortoises. And two doors down, Route 16.
Maybe he had burrowed into a yard somewhere and was just waiting for Ciulla to find him, she thought. Or maybe he waddled farther afield each day he was away. Ciulla is convinced that if Houdini put his mind to it he could have covered as much as a mile. She believes him to be a very determined tortoise.
On Wednesday afternoon, a week after he disappeared, her phone rang at work.
It was Amos Ettere, a 23-year-old chef at Bistro 5. ``I saved your tortoise's life," he said.
Ettere was driving on Boston Street in West Medford, about six blocks from Ciulla's home, when he spotted Houdini crossing the road.
``He was about to get run over by a Ford Focus," Ettere said. ``So I pulled my car into the middle of the road and stopped traffic."
His girlfriend remembered seeing a poster in Medford Square. He called Ciulla.
``I'm no hero," he said.
Ciulla begs to differ.
As for Houdini? The luckiest tortoise in Medford is now safely back home. He won't be going outside again anytime soon.
A pet pulls a slow one on his owner