Columnist Susan Snyder: Hair-raising tale of the tortoises

Sunday, July 9, 2000 | 11:09 a.m.

Susan Snyder's column appears Sundays and Tuesdays. Reach her at snyder@lasvegassun.com or 259-4082.

What kind of reprobate would steal endangered desert tortoises from a retired schoolteacher?

Jean Magdall wants to know.

Magdall, of Las Vegas, inherited four of the hard-shelled critters from her son, Boyd Magdall, who was killed in a traffic pile-up on a California highway March 19. The 57-year-old Las Vegas dentist and amateur race car driver acquired the tortoises from a friend about 30 years ago.

Magdall already is raising two juvenile tortoises. One was given to her by a friend who discovered it on her porch one morning. The other was an offspring of her son's four fully grown tortoises. And when he was killed, she took them in, too.

She kept them in a section of her yard that is circled by a waist-high fence made of concrete, wrought iron and steel mesh. The mesh kept the tortoises from getting out.

The habitat is mostly sand and rock with a covered "cave" dug into one of the dunes. One end is shaded by a towering mulberry. A small pool is tucked among the tall grass that grows underneath.

But it's empty now. Empty ever since two of the tortoises turned up missing three weeks ago. Magdall has been keeping the other pair in her enclosed back yard.

"I wouldn't put them out there again. There you go, babies," Magdall said as she put a pile of raw vegetables and fresh apricots on the back porch for the slow-moving creatures. "Oh, but they like the apricots!"

She sighed a little, recalling the day she found the other two missing.

"I went out in the morning to feed them, and they were gone," she said. "My husband didn't believe me. He went out and about dug himself into a hole looking for them.

"Somebody just decided they wanted some tortoises and took them."

It's a hard thing, she says, to understand why someone would just willfully do such a thing. It likely would be too difficult a stunt for a child to pull, seeing as how the beasts weigh about 35 pounds each.

And after teaching third and fourth graders for 32 years, Magdall is inclined to think the best of children, not the worst of them. She had extended an open invitation to the principal and pupils of Doris Hancock Elementary School nearby. She taught there the last 14 years of her career.

"We were going to bring the kids down here for a field trip," she said, holding out another apricot for her scaly, munching charge. "This has been an aggravating thing for me. I thought I had something I could share with the kids again. I love kids."

Magdall doesn't name the tortoises. They are "wild" animals, after all. But she knows which one is which by the pattern of the bumps on their shells.

"People don't realize how painful it was. I lost my only son," she said. "That's been awfully hard to lose him, and it upset me to lose the tortoises because they were his."

Magdall said anyone with information about the missing tortoises can call her at 870-5622. Then she turned her attention back to the deserted habitat. Wind rippled through the tall, empty grass. Even the stones looked lonely.

"I'd do anything to get them back. If I could have done it, I'd have walked the streets looking for them," Magdall said. "Isn't it rotten when people do things like this?"

Yes. It certainly is.