'People' We Meet: A Girl And Her Tortoise

San Francisco CA

28 November, 2021

6:15 PM

Description

By Yujie Zhou, Mission Local November 27, 2021 "I guess he's like my great-grandfather," said 23-year-old Gloria Li, pointing to her plum-sized tortoise, who is about three years old. "Look how old he is. He's really slow. He has wrinkles. He was born like an old man." Tortoises are not the most common choice of pet. A list published in August, 2020, ranked reptiles, which includes tortoises, the fourth among all the animals owned as pets in the U.S. And the list recorded 136 times as many households with dogs as there were reptiles, not to mention tortoises. Put simply, "It's rare to see people walking their tortoise," said Li. In May, Li moved to the Mission with her boyfriend. After spending a few weeks researching the lives of tortoises in BBC documentaries, and on zoo websites and Reddit, on Nov. 3 she met the little creature in a pet shop in downtown San Francisco. "All the other tortoises were sleeping. But he was the only one awake. There was a big pile of leaves, he sat on top of it and ate like crazy," she said. To read the full article, click here. Mission Local covers San Francisco from the vantage point of the Mission, a neighborhood with all of the promise and problems of a major city. You can support Mission Local here.