Ginny’s Great Escape: How One Tortoise Survived Two Weeks in Nashville
- Jacob Harvey
- 1 day ago
- 3 min read
Phil Shay, Belmont University‘s senior director of development for Curb College, was mowing his lawn one minute. The next he was searching the neighborhood for a missing tortoise.
The clue to its disappearance was waiting at the bottom of his backyard gate. A bendable piece had been pushed upward just enough for Ginny to squeeze through.
For an animal known for moving slowly, Ginny managed to disappear surprisingly fast.
Shay searched the backyard and checked neighboring yards, but Ginny was nowhere to be found.
He worried Ginny might be gone for a while.
And she was – for two weeks.
The Shay family had no idea where Nashville’s slowest fugitive was heading.
Shay put up flyers around the neighborhood and shared Ginny’s disappearance on Facebook.
Before Ginny’s escape, Shay said he had never noticed her trying to dig or find a way out of the yard.
As the days crawled by, the family kept searching. After nearly two weeks with no sign of Ginny, hope started to fade.
Shay noticed some of the missing tortoise flyers he had posted were being taken down. Eventually, the family accepting the possibility that Ginny might be gone.
Then Shay’s phone rang.
He ignored it.
When Shay finally read the voicemail transcript, the two-week tortoise hunt had its conclusion.
The tortoise was apparently a Titans fan and waddled to Nissan Stadium, where she was photographed.
Shay said he could tell from the size of the shell that it was Ginny. He immediately left work and drove downtown to get her.
Of all the places Ginny could have wandered off to, Shay said her final destination was one of the strangest parts of the story.
“I think what surprised me most was that she ended up at such an iconic Nashville place,” Shay said. “I mean, she could have been anywhere, especially if someone relocated her, thinking they were helping by putting her near water.”
Shay believes Ginny may have gotten some unexpected help during her journey.
Someone in a Facebook conversation said they had picked up a large “turtle” and dropped it off near the water. Shay wondered whether the animal could have actually been Ginny.
If someone had picked her up and moved her, Shay realized Ginny could have ended up almost anywhere during those two weeks.
And eventually, Ginny turned up in a place the family never expected.
“It was all quite a wild story when she was found cruising the parking lot on the river side of Nissan Stadium,” Shay said.
Since getting Ginny back, Shay has repaired the area underneath the gate where he believes she escaped.
He said tortoises are naturally curious and can find ways to get out, but he was surprised Ginny managed it because of how much she has grown since the family first got her.
No one expected Ginny’s wandering to lead to a stadium built for much faster athletes.
Three years earlier, Shay and his wife had decided to get a tortoise after their daughters experienced the Covenant School shooting. They wanted a pet, but not the responsibility of a dog.
So, they traded fur for a shell and brought home Ginny, named after Ginny Weasley from the “Harry Potter” series.
“It’s definitely funny because you don’t cuddle with a tortoise,” Shay said.
Shay soon learned the low maintenance pet came with one catch: Ginny, with a life expectancy of 80 years, might outlive him and his children.
Ginny is now safely back home, but exactly what Ginny did during those two weeks on the loose in Nashville may never be known.
Shay has his own idea. He prefers to imagine Ginny taking in some of Nashville’s biggest sights along the way.
“Wouldn’t it be fun to have security camera footage of her walking down Broadway, stopping in for a show at the Ryman, taking the pedestrian bridge over to get in line for Titans tickets?” Shay said. “I think we have enough to write a book on her adventures.”
The tortoise and the hare had a race. Ginny had a two-week tour of Nashville.
Written by Jacob Harvey
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