Man Saves His Drowning Tortise Life, After Breathing In His Mouth For Almost An Hour

A pet owner saved his drowning tortoise’s life after giving it the kiss of life for an hour. John Fletcher found 45-year-old Freda at the bottom of his garden pond limp and looking dead.

Mr Fletcher started performing CPR – and gave the animal mouth to mouth resuscitation. Middle-aged “big lady tortoise” Freda lives with her owner at his home and has free rein of the back garden.
But he was bewildered when Freda vanished on Saturday afternoon and eventually reached into the pond, where he found his pet.
Mr Fletcher said: “It must have been in there for at least an hour. I took it out and it was looking quite dead and limp. “I decided to put my own mouth around the head and give a few short blows having stretched its head out a little.

“A small half teaspoonful of water came out of its mouth which I had opened.”
“Anything’s possible, I’ve seen crazier things. It was certainly very lucky.”
He pushed on with bringing Freda back to life and performed life-saving treatment for another hour.
“I detected some movement so I warmed it up with a hairdryer, massaged its legs and neck and after another full hour it started gasping and opened its eyes,” Mr Fletcher said.

“I first did it and about a teaspoon of water came out. I didn’t think much of it, I thought it was just pushed out by my air, but then her leg twitched.

“I thought it was just a nerve or something but I decided to try again and its head went in like a tortoise does when it’s scared.

“I then massaged her chest for about an hour and the legs kept moving and finally she came back to life.
“Today, she’s eaten a quarter of a tomato and two lettuce leave so I don’t think she’s got brain damage.
“She’s just walking around and looking at things like normal, the only difference is that now she’s looking at a barrier around the pond that I put up yesterday.
Loz Bogaert, owner of Reptile-Nation in Brighton and a herpetologist of 26 years, said: “Tortoises can manage buoyancy for only a short time.
“If it was deep water I would imagine it would just sink like a rock and its little lungs would fill up with water.

“Anything’s possible, I’ve seen crazier things. It was certainly very lucky and a borderline miracle, definitely.”