When rats ate the front legs of a hibernating 90-year-old tortoise named
Mrs. T in Pembrook, Wales, its owner, Jude Ryder, feared the worst. A
£1,000 vet bill did little to improve the situation until Ryder’s
mechanical engineer son Dale, 37, glued prosthetic wheels from a model
aircraft onto the tortoise’s shell, making her twice as fast. Dale had
received Mrs. T as a gift when he was 8 and she was already in her 60s.
