Tortoise Keeper Fears ‘Tank’ Is in the Soup

“Sherman Tank,” mascot of the San Fernando Valley chapter of the California Turtle and Tortoise Club, has been tortoise-napped, his caretaker says.

Jan Gordon of Sylmar said Wednesday she worries that the unusually large California desert tortoise met his end in a soup pot or has been sacrificed in a satanic ritual.

Gordon said he disappeared Sept. 22 and could not have escaped because a six-foot fence anchored in cement surrounds the yard. She has had no reply to flyers offering a $50 reward.

Or he may have been sold, Gordon said. A prized tortoise like 50-year-old Sherman Tank--an 18-pounder who stretches 19 inches from beak to tail--fetches $1,000 to $2,000 on the reptilian black market, she said.

“It’s been a month now and I don’t expect to see him again,” said Gordon, who is in charge of the chapter’s turtle adoption program. “Anybody could have taken him. They could have taken off in a car and gone God knows where.”

And he was charming (well, for a tortoise).

“He would eat out of your hand,” she said. “He’d rest his head on your foot, he would sniff you and follow you anywhere.”