SHE’S the Andover teenager who feared she’d lost her beloved pet tortoise forever.

When Charlotte Wilson’s tiny Turbo went missing last June, she resigned herself to the fact she would never see him again.

But the 17-year-old Andover College student had the surprise of a lifetime last month when a neighbour turned up at her parent’s home in Celtic Drive to ask if the family were missing a tortoise.

The stunned teenager could not quite believe her eyes when the neighbour presented tiny Turbo, safely tucked up in a Tupperware box.

The plucky Hermann’s tortoise, who is no bigger than the palm of a hand, had survived for seven months on his own.

And after battling through wintery weather, the threat of predators and a lack of food and water, the tenacious tortoise had mysteriously turned up in front of a neighbour’s house.

A delighted Charlotte, said: “My eyes were really welling up.

“I had to be at work in 15 minutes but I didn’t want to go. I couldn’t believe it was him.

“I was so happy. I haven’t stopped playing with him since he’s got back.”

The teenager, who hopes to become a midwife, says Turbo originally went missing in June last year while she was revising for her GSCE exams.

Charlotte had placed the tiny tortoise in an outside pen while she studied, but returned 20 minutes later to find he had disappeared.

She believes five-year-old Turbo made his great escape by digging under the pen, before squeezing through a garden fence and out into the open.

She said: “I was crying every day for a week when he went missing.

“I honestly thought I was never going to see him again.”

The family spent weeks searching for Turbo, even jacking up their shed in a desperate effort to find the tiny tortoise.

But as winter approached, they began to wind down their search. So it came as even more of a surprise when the tortoise turned up on their neighbour’s doorstep last month.

On his return, Charlotte and her mum, Karen, raced their little hero to the vets, who were staggered that the tortoise had managed to survive.

Even more astonishing was that Turbo had come out relatively unscathed from the ordeal, suffering just an infection, some dehydration and a minor scratch to his shell.

But with a few regular baths and some love and attention, Turbo was quickly nursed back to full health.

Asked what she planned to do with Turbo next, she said: “We are going to build him a new home.

“Hopefully one which he can’t get out of this time.”