George, an old desert tortoise, lives in the yard of Mick Frew and Linda Mason-Frew. Here, George enjoys a mouthful of dandelion greens. "They certainly get to know people and know where food is coming from," says Mason-Frew, who has had George for more than 20 years. Remember: It's illegal to take a desert tortoise out of the wild and keep it as a pet.

James Gregg / arizona daily star

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Traditional closings by restaurants, stores no longer taken lightly Owner highly enthusiastic over return of Krispy Kreme Southwest Strings is thrivingGiffords backs bill to restore dealershipsEconomic recovery likely to be bumpySpeedometer savvy needed in photo radar ageHer business is on cutting edgeRoyal Buick dealership is dropped by GMHummer gets new lease on lifeTucson Water honors 2 firms

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Why did the desert tortoise cross the road?

It's a long story.

But it's probably out of habit. And chances are good that it started crossing that piece of desert real estate long before there was a road there.

Whatever the reason, local desert-tortoise experts and fans say we should leave them alone and — despite their lovable mugs — fight the urge to take one home (it's illegal).

There's one exception to the "hands-off" rule: If one is trying to cross a road and is in danger of being struck, you can very gently pick it up (don't turn it over) and gently set it down on the other side of the road, says Don Swann, a wildlife biologist with the National Park Service.

Tortoise experts say you shouldn't turn one over or be anything other than gentle because you might put it into "bladder dump" mode. Desert tortoises have massive bladders and will, when threatened, empty them. This not only could be unpleasant for the offending party, but also for the tortoise. It's thought that losing liquid during a drought is unhealthy for a tortoise and could even lead to its death.

Desert tortoises can live to be 100 or more years old, Swann says, so when you see one crossing the road, it may be because it covered that ground long before the road was there.

"If you think back, if the tortoise is 50 years old, Tucson was a very different place 50 years ago," Swann says.

And as a member of a very old species, its kind may have been doing it much, much longer.

Human development into the desert tortoise's natural habitat is the leading threat to them, Swann says. And when he says they've been here a long time, he isn't talking about the relative blink of an eye since humans showed up.

Swann said researchers did a genetic study to determine how close the local Sonoran Desert tortoises are related to their similar-looking California and Nevada desert cousins. It was an eye-opener.

"They're pretty distant (genetically)," Swann said. "They haven't really mixed in more than a million years."

In his experience, Swann says he's found that people really seem to take to tortoises, more so than other reptiles.

"I think people really like tortoises more than other reptiles because they've got kind of a charismatic face, and they live a long time, so they seem to be old and wise," Swann says.

"They're very charismatic," says Cristina Jones, head of the Arizona Game & Fish Department's Desert Tortoises Project. "I have one, which I legally adopted. He follows me around in the backyard like a dog — a very slow dog."

This slow charisma is part of the problem for desert populations, Jones says. She says tortoises may just walk up to people in wilderness areas, and they can't seem to help themselves; they just want to take them home.

When that happens, the problem is threefold: The immediate wild population is decreased. And the future population is threatened, she says, because desert tortoises don't reproduce until they're 10 to 15 years old. Also, if they're taken home and are around other tortoises, they can contract a common but tough and deadly respiratory illness — upper respiratory tract disease — which often afflicts some other species of tortoises and turtles kept as pets. Then, if they escape or are deliberately reintroduced to the wild, they could spread the respiratory disease among the wild population.

The disease is thought to be related to the decline in the Mojave population of desert tortoises, which are now listed as a threatened species.

"I won't claim that they have the personality of a dog, but they certainly get to know people and know where food is coming from," Linda Mason-Frew says.

Mason-Frew said she is very fond of George, an old male desert tortoise who has been living in her yard for well over 20 years. She said George had been the backyard pet of someone in Midtown but kept escaping. Worried that he would become roadkill, the owner gave George away.

Dogs, by the way, are another threat to tortoises, these experts say. A number of Tucson-area tortoises have been badly mauled by dogs. The wildlife experts recommend keeping dogs on leashes or in fenced yards as a way reducing their chances of harming tortoises, as well as potentially deadly encounters with rattlesnakes, coyotes and javelinas.