What the shell?

From our There Will Always Be An England Dep't:

On Christmas Day, there was a dwelling fire in the town of Great Dunmow, some 45 miles northeast of London.

The local fire department responded and handled the matter easily, but there remained the question of how the fire started.

The residents were not home, so it was a neighbor who heard the smoke alarm beeping in the house and called 999 (which is how they spell 911 in Britain - and they had the three-digit emergency number idea long before us! We copied from them.)

The only living being found in the house was not talking, and authorities chalk up his reticence to his being a tortoise.

A 45-year-old tortoise!

It turns out he started the fire which was burning up his bedding. That caused the smoke that set off the alarm, and filled the house with smoke.

“The fire started after the tortoise knocked a heat lamp onto its bedding, which then caught alight,” Gary Wain, watch manager at the Great Dunmow Fire Station, reports. “This tortoise has had a very lucky Christmas Day ― he is 45 years young and will now hopefully continue to live a long and happy life thanks to working smoke alarms.”

Actually, the tortoise did speak to the fire commissioner, but all he could say was that "it all happened so fast."