Towana Looney is the

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.KOKOMO, Miss. (AP) — Myrtle, a cherished pet tortoise, has been reunited with its family in Mississippi weeks after disappearing during a deadly

“He’s been through a lot,” said Myrtle’s grateful owner, Tiffany Emanuel. “I know that he knows just as much as I do that every step of the way I’m going to be there helping him, caring for him, making sure he gets, you know, the help that he needs.”The Emanuel family fled their home in the rural Kokomo area as aon March 15. They returned to find two pine trees had fallen on top of their tortoise’s backyard home.

Weeks later, a neighbor found the injured tortoise. He was taken to the Central Mississippi Turtle Rescue for medical treatment on April 4.“The lady who found the tortoise called me and she said she had run into the owners,” said Christy Milbourne, the organization’s founder and codirector. “She said, ‘I think they’re going to be calling you.’ So, I was excited, and then the owners did call and say, ‘Yeah, that’s my tortoise.’”

Emanuel is now nursing Myrtle back to health.

“It feels good to kind of have some kind of happy out of so much sad and grief and loss,” Emanuel said.of the closely divided Minnesota Legislature to finish work on the state’s next budget. Those negotiations have gone slowly despite his frequent meetings with legislative leaders.

He’s given mixed signals on a 2028 presidential run whilefor an interview that aired in March that he would “certainly consider that” if circumstances were right. He told

last month that he was “not thinking about running in 2028.”But he hasn’t ruled it out, either, and has signaled possible interest in other ways.