Why did the turtle cross the road?

That’s a question that nearly a dozen motorists on Daniels Street racked their brains to figure out Tuesday afternoon after a huge house turtle that escaped from a nearby residence decided to venture out into the roadway.

The sight was enough for Irene Torres, who had just picked up her granddaughter from school, to stop her car in the middle of the road. She watched the reptile shift directions and actually meander underneath her car as she stood by. Other motorists got out and took a closer look at the unique roadway obstruction on Daniels near Union Road.

“It totally caught people off guard – they were getting out of their cars and taking pictures,” Torres said. “Cars were going around and people were pulling over – it was crazy for a minute. People wanted to come see what was going on. It’s not something that you see every day, especially here in Manteca.”

Rather than letting the turtle – which Torres said had a shell that was the size of “half of a basketball” – continue on its trek across the street and into somebody’s yard, one woman hesitantly picked it up and ended up taking it to Brock Elliott School.

She said that an announcement was made to the students about the reptile getting loose in an attempt to find the owner and return it to its rightful home.

“It was fun to see it and it was kind of crazy with all of the cars and the people getting out to see it in the middle of the road, but it was good to see that somebody had taken it to the school to try and find its owner,” Torres said. “It was funny to see how everybody was reacting to it. People were wary about picking it up because they thought they were going to get bit – they were jumping out of the way.

“My son was laughing at me because I was running away from it when in reality it was a turtle.”