INTREPID wandering terrapin Mrs Johnston is safely at home munching on treats after surviving a 200ft cliff plunge and several days in the turbulent tidal River Wye.
"I had someone in to clean the pond and they'd only taken the netting off for a few minutes," said Mrs Shirley Radford, whose clifftop home overlooks the Wye at Tutshill.
"She was off. They can motor pretty fast when they want to, not like a tortoise. It wasn't until later in the day when I looked in the pond and saw only two smaller terrapins, and no Mrs Johnston."
She and her husband Ron, searched all that day and the next before fearing the worst – she had gone over the cliff. But then came a surprise call from a local vet.
"She had come ashore at the Afon Gwy guest house, just above the old road bridge at Chepstow, and the owner, Mostyn Jenkins, had taken her to the vet," said Mrs Radford.
"She was covered in mud when he found her. Luckily she had gone up the river with the tide and not down, or she would be in the River Severn by now.
"As soon as I started talking in the vets she stuck her little head out of her shell. She knew it was me."
The couple have had Mrs Johnston – it used to be just Johnston, until she started laying eggs three years ago – for several years, and have lived in their home for the past 24 years.
Mr Radford retired from the Army and the family came back from Singapore and stopped "travelling all over the world".
"It was because we travelled we thought of having these sort of pets," she said. "Now the children have all grown up and left, and we still have the pets."
Mrs Johnston is recovering with the best of attention, and all she has to show for her ordeal is a chipped shell and a few grazes.