A pair of 80-year-old partially sighted tortoises have been snatched while hibernating in a garden shed.
Shirley Tevlin fears Bobby and Rosie — who she has looked after since childhood — were stolen from her outhouse in Orpington.
The driving instructor, 61, discovered a break-in overnight last Monday with fishing equipment also taken.
She said: “I went running down to the second shed where the tortoises were hibernating in cardboard boxes — and they were gone.
"I literally went berserk, looking for them everywhere. I think they’d just seen them and thought ‘money’, put them in their pockets and gone. I mean what sort of people steal pets? Why take them?”
Interrupting a tortoise’s hibernation can have a negative impact on their health. Mrs Tevlin’s son said: “We’re worried if they’re not being looked after, they’re not going to survive.”
The family visited all the shops and pet stores in their neighbourhood to put up posters offering a £500 reward for information leading to their safe return.
