UPDATE: Mr. Mabel is found! The family took the big guy, who's in good condition, home
Trish Choate
Mr. Mabel was lost, and now he is found, thanks to several North Texans with big hearts.
The 90-pound African sulcata tortoise escaped from his enclosure Oct. 9 in Dean and plodded around lost while his family searched frantically for the beloved pet.
Kevin and Amy Goulart were desperate to find the tortoise they raised from a week-old hatchling to a 10-year-old gentle giant who likes to play, Kevin said.
Mr. Mabel turned up Wednesday evening six miles from his home in Dean, Kevin said.
"He's undamaged, unscathed," he said. "It's awesome!"
Finding Mr. Mabel
Apparently, rescue efforts began when the tortoise tried to cross the road.
Around 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, Mr. Mabel was spotted just over the Wichita County line near Russell's Fireworks on Texas Highway 79.
"We pulled over to check it out," Ashley Miller, owner of Dog E. Style Grooming in Iowa Park, said. "There was a state trooper stopped with another man, helping him across the road."
They left Mr. Mabel at the home of Rodney Reynolds, who lives nearby. Reynolds agreed to hang onto Mr. Mabel and stowed him in his pickup bed for safekeeping.
Miller snapped photos and posted them on social media to help find the owners.
One thing led to another, and soon Kevin heard from his friend, Justin Deegan, that a big tortoise had been found nearby. The Goularts rushed over to Reynolds' house.
They were overjoyed that it was, indeed, Mr. Mabel.
"He actually looks bigger than when he left," Kevin said. "You can tell he's been eating good."
Kevin thinks Mr. Mabel, a vegetarian, dined on pasture grass and wheat during his travels -- although he didn't get the treats he does at home.
Later on Wednesday evening, Deegan thanked Miller for her help on Facebook, saying the Goularts had been "looking day and night for Mr. Mabel!"
"We all met at the house where he was found and brought him back home!" Deegan wrote in a Facebook post. "You have no clue how happy they are!"
Wednesday evening, the Goularts were busy making sure Mr. Mabel's enclosure was in good condition to prevent another walkabout.
The great escape
“A lot of people are like, how do you let a tortoise escape?" he said Tuesday. "They’re like bulldozers.”
Mr. Mabel found a weak spot in his enclosure, which has shelter, heat, food and water, and slipped right through it, Kevin said. Amy had given him water at noon and came back an hour later to find him gone.
Sightings were reported northwest of Dean, in the Kamay area and halfway between Electra and Vernon along U.S. Highway 287.
“He may be looking for a mate or something like that," Kevin said Tuesday. "I don’t really know. In the wild, they range hundreds of miles.”
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The Marvelous Mr. Mabel
Sulcata tortoises are known to bond with their owners and have plenty of personality.
“He’s friendly," Kevin said. "They know you, and they know your voice. They’ll come up to you and let you scratch their head."
They also like bright colors, he said.
"They’re very smart, and they're super strong," Kevin said. "Their sense of hearing and sight is amazing. They can hear you walking from 100 feet.”
Tortoises like Mr. Mabel can outlive their owners and become a legacy pet for their children, Kevin said.
“He’s been around longer than our kids," Kevin said. "We have a 7-year-old boy, and my daughter, she’s 15 months.”
The sulcata tortoise -- also called the African spurred tortoise -- is the biggest mainland tortoise and can reach well over 100 pounds, according to the San Diego Zoo. This tortoise is able to survive weeks without food and water, but it can gulp up to 15 percent of its body weight when it does find water.
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Kevin said Mr. Mabel can't swim but might go to water for a drink or a soak.
Mr. Mabel's shell affords him a certain amount of protection, but while he was lost, Kevin worried about coyotes, bobcats and other predators. Plus, his pet can't right himself if he becomes flipped upside down.
The tortoise started out named "Mabel," Kevin said.
"Usually the two-to-four year mark is when you know if they’re male or female," he said.
Even after it became apparent that Mabel was a mister, the name just stuck, Kevin said. They knew Mr. Mabel was going to get huge when they got him.
“We planned on keeping him in Arizona because it’s a lot easier to keep him in a desert environment," Kevin said. "When we made our move here to North Texas, he came with us after some debate.”
They moved to Dean in 2017. The tiny town, population 480, is situated approximately 10 miles northeast of Wichita Falls.
In the hunt for Mr. Mabel over the last several days, Amy and Kevin probably searched 2,000 acres and 100 miles of roads in the Dean area, Kevin said.
The Goularts also notified game wardens and law-enforcement agencies, distributing flyers picturing Mr. Mabel around North Texas and Southern Oklahoma.
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The community responded with kindness on social media and in real life as the Goularts found out Wednesday -- and earlier when they drove to nearby Henrietta to get the word out.
“We went there to put up flyers, but somebody had already done it," Kevin said.
Trish Choate, enterprise watchdog reporter for the Times Record News, covers education, courts, breaking news, politics and more. She loves getting news tips. If you have a good one, contact Trish at tchoate@gannett.com. Her Twitter handle is @Trishapedia.