Any help or tips for finding a lost Horsefield?

Ron&Em&Koko

New Member
Joined
Jul 2, 2020
Messages
1
Location (City and/or State)
Stoke-on-Trent, United Kingdom
Hello TortoiseForum!
Myself and my partner have lost Koko our 5 year old Horsefield. She's been missing for over a week now and we assume she somehow made her escape from our backyard, since then we have had most of our friends and neighbours come out to help with the search, we have plastered posters throughout our town, we have been to each house above and below us to let everyone knows, a lady we met online bought her sniffer dog Dodge over to search and we another lady we met online has borrowed us her thermal camera, I have even set up a field came in places I think she might be.
For some context our back garden backs out onto a huge actual horse field(ironic?), this backs onto some marshland and to the right is small wood. Our back garden directly faces the marshland and if Koko hand't taken to the right or left I assume she would bound forwards and come to the marshland. Now, I wouldn't have thought that she would stick around in here as burrowing would lead to water or sludge. However, the sniffer dog led us to this area... We have suited up and been in full hunt mode through this marsh, I set up the trail cam and left strawberries out over night - this attracted a pretty hungry rat, but no Koko.
When using the thermal camera we checked our neighbours tortoise(George) to see how he would show up, it picked him up so we assumed we could hopefully find Koko. We have been through the wood with this and across the whole field, there are literally TOO many places for her to hide. Aside being really cool; it seems that heat signatures are hard to see through leaves and trees... this is where I reckon Koko would love to hide or burrow.
We are pretty exhausted by this point, it may simply benefit to hear some stories of people who have lost them and get any advice of how to cope with this horrible loss as things are seeming a little futile.
Other than that if you have ANY advice we will definitely try it! :)

Thank you <3
 

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Sarah2020

Well-Known Member
Tortoise Club
Platinum Tortoise Club
Joined
Mar 16, 2020
Messages
1,604
Location (City and/or State)
London, UK
Lovely looking tortoise. Good luck and hope you find KoKo. We have had hot weather and they can bury and the soil above looks undisturbed. Have you checked all shrubs in yours and surrounding gardens for any loosened soil? If you find any then very carefully scoop away. In the wild they live in burrows around the tree roots so could have found something similar? I am sure other suggestions will be online.
 
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