( CNN ) -- I once had a pet iguana . His name was Kramer , and he was the biggest , meanest thing you 've ever seen . Without question , he spawned from the land of darkness , soon deciding his evil role in life was to make every day miserable for the Bellinis . And he accomplished this by whipping us mercilessly with his powerful tail . `` Good morning , Kramer . '' Thwack ! `` Screw you , lizard ! '' Eventually , we tired of the physical and mental abuse and sold Kramer to man who might have been looking for an exotic pet , or , perhaps , an exotic pair of boots . Either way , this poor guy was getting an exotic tail straight to the neck . Buyer beware . Thwack ! `` Screw you , lizard ! '' As Kramer 's new owner drove away from our house , thus ended my childhood interest in any pet not covered in fur . For it 's hard to be vicious when your primary objective in life is to sleep eighteen hours a day . But , hey , plenty of other people still enjoy their weird , exotic pets , and this week I stumbled upon a fascinating , if not completely fabricated , story that was trending all over the Web . It was about a tortoise in Brazil who turned up alive and well after going missing from its family more than 30 years ago . The story , as recounted by several news agencies and websites who seemed not to find anything particularly odd about the details of this miracle , goes like this : . In 1982 , Manuela the tortoise vanished from her home in Rio . The Almeida family searched everywhere ( well , almost ) , and finally settled on the perceived reality that , maybe , after workers left a door open , their beloved tortoise just up and decided to leave . Mind you , very slowly . Now , fast forward 30 years to earlier this month , when the father of the house sadly passed away . The family , despite their grief , eventually decided it was time to go through the old man 's stuff , which was piled high in a second-floor bedroom that was always kept locked . That 's when the son , Leandro , discovered Manuela inside a box with a record player . Presumably listening to old Boz Scaggs 45s . Tortoises . They 're into that . The family daughter , Lenita , was shocked more than anyone to be reunited with her childhood pet . `` We 're all thrilled to have Manuela back , '' she said . `` But no one can understand how she managed to survive for 30 years in there . It 's just unbelievable . '' Yes . It is . However , a local vet theorized that the notoriously resilient red-footed tortoise , which could have survived long periods without food , possibly snacked on termites . Which explains why , after three decades locked in a room , the first thing she asked for was an In-N-Out burger . `` Get me a Double Double up in here . Animal style , yo ! '' Of course , there 's also the question of water . Specifically , `` Where was it ? '' Nothing I read adequately covered this rather important detail , and I did n't exactly raise the bar very high . I literally would 've accepted `` magic '' as a suitable answer . So , who knows ? But , anyway , that 's the ( possibly ) amazing animal story trending out of Brazil . And the Web absolutely loves it . Though , remarkably , Manuela is n't the only pet tortoise who has recently found its way into the world 's collective consciousness . There 's also Sammy -- the beloved 100-pound companion of San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick , who will be playing in Super Bowl XLVII this weekend in New Orleans . Kaepernick . Not Sammy . Though , the latter would be far more interesting . Especially when it starts eating the 30-yard-line . `` This tastes terrible . '' `` It 's synthetic turf . '' `` Well , I 'll be damned . '' Munch . Munch . `` Say , are n't you Beyonce ? '' Anyway , there 's my feeble attempt to somehow relate all this to the Super Bowl . Naturally , Sammy the tortoise wo n't be on Kaepernick 's mind on Sunday when he takes on the Baltimore Ravens . But there 's a pretty good chance you 'll hear about the exotic pet in one of those over-produced , pregame mini-biopics . Perhaps even punctuated by the music of Boz Scaggs . Tortoises . They 're into that .
`` Apparently This Matters '' is CNN Tech 's weekly look at offbeat topics trending online . This week , Jarrett looks at a couple of high-profile pet tortoises . TL;DR A new study finds that the number of people who have been diagnosed with cancer has increased by more than 50 percent in recent years. The other will not -- we repeat , `` not '' -- be playing in the Super Bowl .