SCOTTSDALE, ARIZONA — Rex, a giant African sulcata tortoise estimated to be about 35 years old, wandered down a suburban Phoenix street one spring evening before neighbors gathered around him on the sidewalk. He is being adopted by Garret Beshey after a days-long search reunited him briefly with his previous owner.

Sara Westfall's 5-year-old daughter was the first to spot Rex walking along the sidewalk. The Westfall family hoisted the tortoise into a wheelbarrow and rolled him into their backyard, where they fed him lettuce and carrots, stopped mowing their lawn so he could graze, dug a pit for a shallow pool so he could soak, and ordered hay online to make him comfortable.

The family posted signs reading "Large Tortoise Found" around the neighborhood and received multiple calls from neighbors inquiring about Rex in the days that followed. About five days after his escape, Rex's owners reached out.

Frank Boxberger bought Rex as an adult at a San Diego pet store roughly 15 years ago, and the tortoise has grown by about a foot in length since then. For 15 years, Rex lived in the backyard of Boxberger's Arizona home, interacting with him whenever he came outside, and once appeared at Boxberger's daughter's wedding carrying a beer cooler on his back. Boxberger and his wife had temporarily rehomed Rex at Boxberger's mother's house, and he believes Rex escaped when someone touring the home left the gate open.

Sulcata tortoises hatch at about the size of golf balls but grow into the third-largest tortoise species in the world, weighing up to 200 pounds and living up to 150 years. They require large, grassy outdoor enclosures, access to clean water, and dry, warm shelter during winter months, and they are diggers. The U.S. banned importation of African sulcata tortoises in the early 2000s, though breeding them remains legal, and they are often sold as novelties at reptile shows with very little information about their care requirements.

Dan Marchand, founder of the Phoenix Herpetological Sanctuary, which houses about 700 sulcata tortoises that arrived over 20 years, quoted buyers as saying they cannot resist the hatchlings. "They're so damn cute, you can't help but [say] 'Oh, I want to take one or two of these home for my kids,'" he said. "If you do your homework and you're prepared for the size and what they can do to your yard and if you give them the right set up, they can be a fantastic pet. You just have to be prepared." Marchand added: "They're not destructive by nature, but they're just so big, they don't realize how strong they are. They don't go around anything. They just go through it."

Eclecteri Tortoise & Reptile Rescue/Sanctuary takes in roughly 1,250 sulcata tortoises each year and refers at least another 1,000 to other rescues. Owner Teri Boyungs said, "The overwhelming majority of the abandoned tortoises come from people who just can't take care of them anymore." She added: "There's no government or county support for this species and the few private rescues that take them in are inundated each year." "Arizona is ground zero for the chaos as our climate allows the eggs to ground hatch easily and each female can have 60+ babies a year," Boyungs said.