A family pet has disappeared from outside a home in northeast Kansas, but chances are it didn’t get very far unless someone gave it a lift.

WIBW-TV reports (http://bit.ly/157gtRE ) the animal is a 50-pound tortoise that Geary County Sheriff Tony Wolf describes as about the size of a truck tire.

Wolf’s office received a call Monday night that the African spurred tortoise was missing from its pen in rural Geary County, outside Junction City.

Authorities are investigating the case as a possible theft. But they also say the pen’s gate may have been left open by accident or that the tortoise was frightened by stormy weather and burrowed underground.

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Associated Press information from: WIBW-TV.