Threatened Maybe, but Byrtle Is One Tough Turtle : Families: Tortoise that vanished 10 years ago is reunited with his owners. But how did he get so far from Long Beach?

If only Byrtle could talk.

This California desert tortoise vanished from his owners’ back yard in Long Beach more than a decade ago, only to turn up last month on the streets of Santa Maria about 190 miles away.

On Saturday, Byrtle was reunited with his owners at a prearranged meeting in the parking lot of a Ventura restaurant.

During the decade-long journey, he was dropped on his back or smashed by a car, gained about four pounds and grew a few inches longer. How he got from Long Beach to northern Santa Barbara County is anybody’s guess.

“He’s been through some rough times,” said Donna Waddell, 60, of Santa Maria, who found the tortoise’s adoptive family. As a threatened species, he was tagged with a sticker that helped Waddell trace his original owners, the Ridgeway family of Long Beach.

“Oh! He’s so big!” Susie Ridgeway cried, seeing her foot-long pet for the first time since 1982. “His name is Byrtle. When we first got him, we thought it was a she, and we named her Myrtle the Turtle. Then we found out he was a boy, so we changed it to Byrtle.”

Byrtle flailed his scaly foot claws as Ridgeway stroked his head and crooned over him in the middle of a Denny’s Restaurant parking lot in Ventura. Lunchtime diners peered out of their windows in amazement as they witnessed the reunion between the 11-pound reptile and the 25-year-old Long Beach woman.

When Byrtle was discovered in Santa Maria, his muddy brown shell was cracked and had been mended with fiberglass, Waddell said. Evidently, she said, Byrtle had been dropped or run over during his journey across Southern California. Someone applied fiberglass to the shell to help him heal.

“He’s good and healthy, though,” Waddell said. “Whoever had him took good care of him.”

Byrtle, who is more than 50 years old, was adopted in 1980 by the four-member Ridgeway family. They kept him in their back yard for two years before he hit the road.

“He was in an enclosed area, but every once in a while he would climb over the fence or dig his way out,” said Susie Ridgeway, who was a teen-ager at the time.

“We ran ads, put signs on telephone poles and told everyone we lost our turtle,” said Polly Ridgeway, her mother. “We all were so saddened by his loss.”

But no response. He didn’t call. He didn’t write. Still, Byrtle was wearing an official registration sticker required by the state Department of Fish and Game. The department keeps track of California desert tortoises because they are classified as a threatened species.

Last month Byrtle resurfaced on the streets of Santa Maria and was turned over to Waddell, who helps Fish and Game officials by keeping tortoises until their registered owners can be located.

“This was a very lucky tortoise,” Waddell said. Usually, she said, tortoises rub off the small stickers attached to the bottom of their shells. Byrtle’s sticker was still legible, and when she called the Department of Fish and Game, she received Polly Ridgeway’s telephone number.

“We were so excited when she called,” said Polly Ridgeway, who will take care of Byrtle at her Long Beach home because her daughter’s apartment does not allow pets.

When last seen in Ventura County, Byrtle was in a white cardboard box on the back seat of Ridgeway’s white Chrysler, on his way home.