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EVENING NEWS (Jeffersonville, Indiana) 23 September 06 Rain drives tortoise to Clarksville clinic (David Mann)
Photo at URL below - and my reason for posting here: Otis the tortoise knocked on the door of local vet Dr. Leslie Knable during Friday night's storms. (Kevin McGloshen)
Imagine you're a tortoise. You’re out of your natural climate. It’s 3 a.m. and you’re standing outside in the midst of one of the harshest storms Southern Indiana has seen all year.
Where would you go? You’d knock on the door of the closest animal clinic, would you not?
That’s what Otis — an approximately two-foot long tortoise — did during the wee hours of Saturday morning while a violent rain and wind storm raged outside.
“It was standing up and knocking at my door,” said Leslie Knable, a local veterinarian who found the tortoise “hell bent” on getting into the clinic during Friday night’s storm. She gave him the nickname, Otis, by the way.
Around 1 a.m. Saturday morning, Knable went to her office — Blackiston Mill Road Animal Clinic in Clarksville — to check on the condition of a sick animal she had staying there. While she was in the office she decided to do some paperwork. After being there for a few hours she heard a loud knocking noise coming from the waiting room in the front of the building.
At first, she said, she thought it was the storm. After the noise persisted for a while longer, she figured it was the kitten that she had in the office with her. “Then I realized that the kitten was sitting next to me.”
Knable, who was alone in the building, nervously walked toward the front door and looked outside. Sure enough, standing on his back two legs, there was Otis. He was trying desperately — clawing and scratching — to get in the door and out of the storm, she said.
Standing with its head stretched out, looking directly at her, she said, “it looked like a little old man.”
Having some knowledge of the creatures, Knable opened the door and allowed the animal to walk into the clinic. He immediately calmed down once inside the building and began to simply follow her around the office. Knable fed him a couple of tomatoes and gave him a quick check up to make sure he wasn’t sick or hurt. Otis even played nice with the kitten. Eventually, she said, he sat down in front of the faux fireplace in the clinic’s waiting room and went to sleep.
Given his behavior, he was probably someone’s pet who ran away from home, she said. The animals are not native to this area because they cannot survive cold winters. Knable said she is not an exotic animal expert, but she estimates he’s about 15 years old given his size. She was unsure of the breed but estimated that such animals probably have a lifespan of about 50 to 100 years.
If anyone is missing a tortoise, they are asked to call the animal clinic at (812) 944-8216. Otherwise, she will contact the Louisville Zoo to find out what to do with him.
Knable, who has been a veterinarian for the last 17 years or so, said it was the strangest thing she's seen in all her years in the profession.
What are the odds, she said, of all the places for this strange animal to go he went to an animal clinic?
Rain drives tortoise to Clarksville clinic

It is pretty bad when a vet can't tell the difference between an alligator snapper and a tortoise!!!!
She's lucky he wasn't hungery as well. But then she'd only make that mistake once.

I shouldn't be so harsh. It is a common snapper.
I need more coffee.