Just because a huge tortoise might crawl its way slowly through life, doesn’t mean that it won’t run into some serious obstacles. Take one particular tortoise named Humpty who managed to run away from home. But he later wished he hadn’t after he ran into some problems and ended up with a broken shell. For a tortoise, a shell doesn’t just serve as a home, but also as protection against predators, so to suffer such a massive setback was debilitating. Fortunately, Humpty ended up in the hands of good people who were more than happy to offer their help to this poor, wounded creature.Unlike Humpty Dumpty, Humpty the tortoise only broke a part of his shell after he managed to escape his human owner in San Diego, California. He had been wandering around when a dog scared the heck out of him.
Unfortunately, the impact damaged his shell. But the San Diego County Department of Animal Services came to his rescue, and it was a good thing they did because Humpty was in a lot of pain. The department’s director Dan DeSousa knew they had to work fast to fix the shell.
DeSousa pointed out that the healing process for a broken shell takes time but using the proper cast and a lot of medical attention, it was possible to fix it. A lot of the damaged pieces of the shell were quickly re-aligned. Then the specialist used screws and zip ties to keep the shell in place.
This material will aid in the healing over the next few months. This means that someone needed to care for this lovely sulcata tortoise. So, when local news covered the story, the original owner allegedly reached out, but he never called back after learning that the surgery on the 40-year-old tortoise would cost almost $4,000.
They also weigh about 200 pounds, which is why most owners often abandon them because they’re too big to be cared for properly. DeSousa believes that Humpty will make a full recovery eventually because sulcata tortoises are tough, but after this experience, Humpty will think twice before running away.
