A young boy named leandro was living in southern brazil with his family one morning he got up and went downstairs in his house and he began looking for his beloved family pet a tiny young red-footed tortoise named manuela the first place he looked was the back room of the first floor where manuela spent most of her time but she wasn’t in there so he decided to search the rest of the first floo where manuela was allowed to free roam but rarely did but after looking around he still couldn’t find her he knew she was too little to climb up the stairs to the second floor so he figured she had to be hiding somewhere on the first floor so he ran into his kitchen where his family was getting ready for the day and he enlisted their help to go looking for her within an hour they had turned the entire house upside down and had made their way out into their backyard but there was still no sign of the little tortoise and so while leandro and his siblings were running around their backyard yelling out for manuela their father called them over and told them that unfortunately manuela was gone most likely she slipped out of one of the doors that had been left open and had found her way into the nearby forest that butted up against their property leandro and his siblings begged their father to go looking for manuela in the forest but he told them that because she was so small it would be nearly impossible to find her leandro was crushed and he just prayed that someday that little tortoise would come back to him 30 years later in 2013 leandro and his siblings were now grown adults and had moved out and had started lives of their own but in january of that year their father passed away and so the kids decided to go back to the family home and clear out some of his old possessions the father was a bit of a hoarder and was always on the lookout for old tvs and microwaves and furniture that other people had thrown away and he would snatch these things up he would bring them to his house and stuff them into his upstairs storage closet promising his family he planned on fixing these things up but he never did and over time as he collected more and more junk that closet became so packed that leandro’s father couldn’t even go inside of it and so it was kind of just sealed off and forgotten about now that he was gone the kids knew they would have to go in there and get rid of all that junk they began hauling all of the stuff out and onto the curb for the trash collectors to pick up and at one point leandro picked up a big heavy box that looked like an old record player and so he brought it outside he set it on his curb and then he turned around to walk back towards the house when his neighbor who had been outside the whole time jokingly yelled to him hey are you going to throw away this tortoise too and leandro turned around and there poking its head out of the old record box was manuela the tortoise happy and healthy as can be.
30 years earlier manuela had managed to climb inside of this old record box when their father had brought it home and then the father brought that box upstairs and put it inside of his storage closet along with manuela once she was inside this closet manuela just carved out a life for herself she transformed the record box into her home and she would leave it to eat termites and other insects and lick condensation off the walls red footed tortoises are known for being extremely resilient when food is scarce. They can go two to three years between meals and if after that there’s still no food they can lower their body temperatures and other physiological processes and enter into this state of suspended animation that allows them to go even longer without sustenance because of this it’s no wonder that tortoises like manuela live for at least 50 years on average leandro rushed over to manuela he scooped her up he had missed her so much he could not believe he was looking at her again and while manuela had been doing just fine inside of her closet she was no doubt very pleased to be reunited with her family.
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