Stuffed turtle snatched from Victorian antique shop

A brazen thief has been filmed stealing a $500 stuffed turtle named Myrtle from a Geelong antique shop.

CCTV shows the man entering How Bazaar today while shop owner, Peter Summers, was on a lunch break.

The thief snatched Myrtle the turtle from the cabinet and was shown fleeing the scene on his bicycle.

He made it just a few hundred metres down the road before he was blocked by a long freight train.

“The freight train was great. Without that he would’ve got over the railway line and we wouldn’t have been able to chase him,” Mr Summers told 9NEWS.

Shop assistant Jared Carney and Mr Summers pursued the man, and tackled him before tying up his hands and feet with cables before police arrived.

“He was really trying...he wasn’t going to let go of the turtle,” Mr Carney said.

Officers arrived at the scene and found the turtle thief with two homemade guns.

He was arrested, but is yet to be charged.

Myrtle survived the ordeal with only a few cracks to its shell.