Tortoise escapes from Pennsylvania vet clinic for third time

Sept. 26 (UPI) -- Residents of a Pennsylvania town are being asked to keep a lookout for a tortoise who escaped his home at a veterinary clinic for the third time.

The Mahoning Valley Animal Hospital in Leighton said in a Facebook post that Tank, a tortoise belonging to veterinarian Mike Nelson, escaped from his outdoor pen outside the clinic.

"I think he caught wind that Dr. Mike was going to bring him in for the season, and he just decided he was going to high-tail it and go on an adventure," Megan Mcfarland a veterinarian technician at the animal hospital, told WNEP-TV.

She said Tank apparently escaped Thursday night or early Friday morning.

"We walked out to the yard; all of us looked around the perimeter just to make sure [he wasn't] hiding somewhere that Dr. Mike just didn't see, and Dr. Mike noticed there was a hole in the fence that the little sucker plowed through," McFarland said.

She said Tank is known for his escapes.

"I call him Houdini. This is probably the third time he's gotten loose. We found him the past two times, obviously relatively close. The last time he was missing for maybe about two weeks," she said.