The story of Rockalina the turtle — who was rescued after nearly a half-century of neglect — now has a new character.

Enter an Oreo-sized baby turtle, who will be Rockalina's new friend and who represents a turning point in her recovery.

"That was the very first time she came nose-to-nose, like right in the face of her own kind," said Chris Leone, who runs Garden State Tortoise, a turtle sanctuary based in New Jersey.

For nearly 50 years, Rockalina, an eastern box turtle, survived on a linoleum kitchen floor, her legs entangled in cat hair, her claws unnaturally bent upward while she subsisted on mostly cat food. She had been taken from the wild in the 1970s by a New York boy, and from that time, lived in that unnatural environment.

Eastern box turtles are usually found by ponds, in

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