ORINDA — A cold-blooded stroll by a shell-covered wanderer caused motorists on a Sunday drive through this Lamorinda city to swerve, slow, stop and eventually call police.
In the end, the jaywalker — this one a tortoise weighing at least 40 pounds — ended up back behind an enclosure, and the vehicles he didn’t try hard to avoid evaded damage.
“His name is Bernie. He was pretty large,” Orinda Police spokesperson Officer Chanel Taliaferro said. “I’m sure he maybe even was a little heavier than what has been estimated. We don’t know how old he is.”
What police do know that Bernie has a distaste for being kept in an enclosure. Taliaferro said “this is not the first time he has made the great escape.”
Bernie’s adventure happened Aug. 9 and ended with him on southbound Camino Pablo, a major roadway near Highway 24 that is at the southern portion of the San Pablo Dam Road corridor. He ended up at the intersection of Camino Sobrante.
“It’s a very busy street and place,” Taliaferro said. “It’s a major throughfare here. He was in one of the two lanes.”
It’s also about a half-mile from where Bernie usually lives inside an enclosure with an owner. Tortoises live their lives on land in contrast to water-dominant turtles.
Police did not identify Bernie’s owner or give that person a citation.
Bernie’s walk — likely sparked by a heat wave that would give energy to reptiles — came to light about 2 p.m. when multiple people called police to report that he was interfering with traffic and making things unsafe.
Officers got to the scene within minutes, Taliaferro said. They soon contacted Animal Control officers for precautionary reasons and also found that Bernie had an air tag and phone number attached to him.
Authorities eventually contacted the owner, who responded by picking up the runaway reptile.