Runaway pet tortoise roams Kansas for 9 months before heart

A motorist's decision to stop on a highway in the Florida Panhandle to allow a turtle to cross the road led to a chain-reaction crash involving multiple vehicles, including a semi-truck, on May 16, Walton County officials said. (Credit: Walton County Sheriff's Office)

LENEXA, Kan. – That's a Kansas woman you hear shouting "yabba-dabba-doo" when her beloved pet tortoise was found nine months after it meandered away from home.

Jan Langton's love of turtles dates back to her childhood after a family friend gave her a desert turtle. The Lenexa woman, who also loves The Flintstones, wanted to name her Fred – but the operative word here is her.

"So I named her Fredericka," she said. "And Fredericka, unfortunately, had an accident, and she passed away."

In the back of her mind, it always made Langton sad that she never had a "Fred," until she saw a post on Facebook in 2015. Someone had found a Russian tortoise, and the owners couldn't be found.

"And so I said, 'You know, hey, I'll take her,'" she said. "And that's the Fredericka that we have today."

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Fredericka is a 17-year-old Russian tortoise who lives in Lenexa, Kansas, with her owner, Jan Langton.

(Jan Langton)

It wasn't the first time Langton's beloved 17-year-old tortoise ran away from home successfully. Yet, it was the first nine-month Houdini act that Fredericka had performed that had her owner sleepless at night.

Langton said she decided to let Fredericka have free rein in the fenced-in backyard. As a precaution, she tried to fit Fredericka through the spindles horizontally and then vertically to make sure she couldn't get out.

"And I thought, 'I'm good to go,'" she recalled. "There's no way this tortoise can get out of here."

Langton would bring Fredericka in every night to avoid the racoons and shelter the tortoise from the weather. Leave it to Fredericka, though, to find an unnoticeable 2-inch gap to aid in her disappearance.

When Langton came home after work to bring her back in the house, she couldn't find her.

"I looked in every one of her bushes that she ever hid," Langton said.

See, Fredericka loved a good game of hide-n-seek. When she would hide in one bush and be found, the tortoise would go to the next one. She changed her bush every night, Langton said.

As dusk set and the last bush was finally checked, a once-frantic Langton was now sick in the pit of her stomach.

"Oh, good Lord, she's gotten out," Langton shouted.

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Fredericka enjoys eating dandelions.

(Jan Langton)

Just how far can a tortoise go? Well, they're from the Mediterranean and known as nomads – they roam everywhere.

Langton said Fredericka's favorite thing to do is walk. If allowed, a tortoise can stroll 18 miles a day, then stop, and then do it all over again the next day.

"She could have reached anywhere," said Langton as she hit social media asking the surrounding Kansas City areas if they have seen her pet.

Soon, Langton had the whole community looking for her lost friend. The $400 tortoise reward she offered was a nice incentive, too.

Strangers would text her out of the blue with random photos of a turtle they had found. Soon, Langton found herself giving Tortoise 101 lessons to all followers on her Nextdoor and Facebook apps. She pleaded with everyone to post her missing tortoise flyer, because fall was coming, and Fredericka could die if temperatures got under 50 degrees.

"I wasn't going to give up, because I didn't like feeling guilty for not having noticed the gap under the bay window that was used to escape," Langton said. "I felt bad for the tortoise, because she's hungry, she's cold."

A stranger even offered her bloodhound to help in the search. Nothing.

The seasons would now change to Kansas' harsh winter. Nine months would pass before the unthinkable.

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Henry Miles, a 7-year-old neighborhood boy, found Fredericka in the woods behind his parent's home. He was rewarded with $400 from the tortoise's owner.

(Courtesy: Miles family)

About a week before Fredericka was found, Langton posted her flyer one last time on Nextdoor. It was a long shot, but spring was here and people would be clearing out their landscaping.

It was on May 20 when Langton received a phone call at work from her daughter. Henry Miles, a 7-year-old neighborhood boy, had found Fredericka walking along a mowed area adjacent to the woods behind his parent's home.

"She then texts me the picture, and it's her. It's her! Everyone thought I had won the lottery," Langton exclaimed.

She couldn't get home fast enough.

"I had to calm myself down," she recalls feeling like a 3-year-old on Christmas morning. "Do not speed. Do not speed. It's OK."

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Fredericka was found on May 20, 2023, after nine months on the run.

(Jan Langton)

People would ask her all the time how she knew it was her tortoise that was found. She reminds them that there's probably only one tortoise galloping free in her subdivision woods. Tortoises also has a have unique fingerprints: their shells and beaks. Langton used Fredricka's shell to confirm it was her tortoise.

After the excitement wore off, Langton had her $400 reward ready to hand over to Henry along with a handwritten thank-you note.

"I had that money stashed in my drawer ever since I announced it," Langton recalls. "His eyes got as big as saucers. He was so modest and so sweet."

Malnourished and dehydrated, Fredericka made a trip to her veterinarian who told Langton the marks on the tortoise's shell were probably from a raccoon attack. Her injured eye was likely from the same event.

Veterinarians also told Langton they were shocked that the tortoise survived a winter in Kansas.

"That is a miracle in and of itself that she survived it," she said.

Today, it's still a mystery where Fredericka went on her months-long sabbatical.

It's believed she found a home, not in the fictional prehistoric city of Bedrock, but in a compost pile of grass clippings complete with a moist underground to dig.