Dumb Friends League looking for owner of tortoise wandering in city

DENVER — Not sure if you can say the tortoise the Dumb Friends League is calling Nazuri, is one of the slowskis… because word about her certainly gets around very quickly.

The 10-year-old African Spurred Tortoise was found by someone near Picadilly and Maxwell in Green Valley Ranch about a week ago.

She is used to living in the Sahara Desert but the high plains of Colorado have some of the same things she would like…the sand and scrub oaks for sure.

“We are starting from ground zero with this one,” said Chris Gallegos of the Dumb Friends League. “She doesn’t have a chip or collar with a name on it so we have no way to know who her owner might be.”

She will live up to 100 years. Right now she weighs about 40 pounds and will get even bigger. If no one claims the shelled wonder she will be shipped off to Longmont’s Reptile Center. The Denver Zoo is also a possibility but they have a full exhibit of tortoises.

Turtles live in water and tortoises on land, and just so you know the largest one found could be the 700-pound Galapagos Tortoise.

While the name tortoise comes from ‘the underworld’ a group of turtles is called a bale…but a group of tortoises? If you know hit me back! jon.bowman@kdvr.com