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It’s impossible to know what was on Molly’s mind when the rotund specimen was found plodding along at a turtle’s pace at the edges of a vast wetland on the Canadian prairie.
What’s clear is that Molly — an African spurred tortoise whose species originally hails from the Sahara desert — had no business being at Oak Hammock Marsh in Manitoba’s Interlake.
“I think [we] were definitely just baffled that something of her size was just hanging out at the marsh,” said Gillian Malchuk, a nature interpreter at Oak Hammock.
Malchuk and her coworkers rescued the 36-kilogram creature late last month after fielding quizzical reports of tortoise sightings for days before.
They presumed people were mistaken. Surely it was just a common-though-still-impressive snapping turtle, native to Manitoba.
But then someone logged a sighting on iNaturalist, a free app that enables nature nerds to contribute to citizen science by uploading photos and location information of flora and fauna.
That set Malchuk and her peers off on a tortoise hunt that didn’t last long.
Gillian Malchuk, a nature interpreter at Oak Hammock Marsh, talks about an unusual visitor she found in the parking lot. Molly, a pet African spurred tortoise, had escaped its family’s yard two weeks earlier and somehow ended up 20 kilometres away at the wetland conservation area, located north of Winnipeg.
They expected something more petite.
“A visitor came through to the front desk and said, ‘Hey, tortoise in the parking lot,’ so we bolted out and both of us were sort of waist-deep in the reeds looking around, trying to see where we might find her,” Malchuk said.
“And then someone driving past in their car pointed out their window to behind us and we both spun around and there was this massive tortoise. So definitely, definitely hard to miss.”
Oak Hammock staff fed her cucumbers and flower petals, took her on guided tours of the marsh interpretive centre offices and babied her all around until it was time for the scaly lady to head home.
Malchuk and others found a missing tortoise post from Molly’s family on social media and found her rightful owners.
Her “mother” came to pick her up at Malchuk’s on July 22.
“As soon as she opened the gate into my yard, she just went, ‘Oh, Molly,’ and she was so excited to see her,” said Malchuk.
Staff learned the family had Molly for about 15 years and raised her from the time she was a baby.
The theory is she snuck out from a gap in the family’s backyard fence amid renovations.
“I’ve worked with tortoises before. They are nature’s little Houdini,” said Malchuk. “The period of time that Molly was in my yard for the evening, she spent the whole time trying to get out, trying to get under my fence, find little holes into my deck.”
What’s harder to explain is how Molly made it to the marsh, about 20 kilometres from home.
One of the prevailing theories at Oak Hammock is that “maybe a well-meaning Samaritan saw her and thought perhaps she belonged in a wetland, not realizing that we we don’t have tortoises here,” Malchuk said.
A tortoise like her would drown almost immediately if she made it into the depths of the wetland.
Some staff think maybe, just maybe, she hoofed it the whole way on her own.
“How she made it over 20 kilometres to the marsh, only Molly can tell,” Malchuk said.
