My sisters indoor cat escaped into the snowy night once and we had a hell of a time finding her because I had just finished shoveling the driveway which left no tracks. After a while, we hear the meowing coming from the neighbor’s car. We’re looking under the car but can’t see her. Finally a little black paw sticks out under the car from the engine compartment. She’d gotten under the hood. So we had to ask the neighbor to pop the hood for us and there she was begging to be let out from next to the battery.
We were in Chicago with our daughter and granddaughter, and ate at the Pret a Manger across from Millennium Park. She paid for our food and we sat at a inside booth to eat.
We got up, threw away the trash, and walked across the street to the Crown Fountain (the one with the spitting faces), when she said “Stop! Where’s my credit card?” She looked through her purse and wallet, aghast at losing it in such a busy place. We played with her daughter while she crossed back to check at restaurant. She came back a few minutes later, card in hand. It was sitting on the bench where we sat. She said the couple sitting next to us were still there, and they saw the card and luckily didn’t just take it.
Phew!!
I once went to an ATM a couple towns over from where we live - and there was a card sticking out of the slot. Luckily the bank was still open, so I went in and handed it to them; it wasn’t one of their clients, but I figured that was a better place to leave it than taking it with me. I looked up the owner’s number with directory assistance and told him i’d found his card and where I turned it in. He was gobsmacked that he’d managed to get cash and LEAVE THE CARD. Must have been in quite a hurry.
I was putting stuff in the trunk when leaving a friend’s place a few years ago, and swung my arm out and felt my wedding ring fly off my finger. It was a bit loose as it had been my wife’s father’s ring and I had never had it resized. I looked for it, but it was night, there was a foot of fresh snow on the road and a sizable snow bank along the curb, and there was no sign of any hole where it had gone into the snow. I eventually gave up and went home and told my wife I had lost it.
Two weeks later, I was visiting the same friend, came out to the car, happened to glance down, and and saw a glint of light. My ring was half-buried in the now packed down snow by the driver’s door.
The ATMs for both banks I deal with won’t open the cash dispenser door and give you your money until after you have removed your card.
I posted this story a while back in another thread. It’s a story that I’ve told numerous times and I must tell it again.
This happened to me last winter. I came home from walking the dogs one morning (drove to the trail). When I got out of the car my hands were full - keys, collars, my hat, etc. and I had picked up a used Kleenex that was on the passenger’s seat. As I walked past the garbage can that’s in the garage I dropped the kleenex in there. We have a key holder/hook thing on our wall next to the door in the kitchen. I ALWAYS automatically hang up my keys as I walk in - just habit. So the next morning my husband went to start my car for me (to warm it up). I was in the basement donning my boots, etc. and he yells down to me “where are your keys?” I reply, “Aren’t they hanging up?” Of course, the answer is no. So I look in my jacket pocket, not there. I look everywhere - under the bench in the entryway, the garage floor, under my car, my other jackets - in the meantime he’s started my car with my other set of keys. The set that’s missing is only a car key and a house key. I get home from my walk and my husband is still looking and now is quite upset. (He’s an extreme door locker). He tells me that now we have to get a new door lock, blah, blah blah. I said, “first of all, the keys don’t have our address on them, secondly the key has to be somewhere in the house because I got home with the car!!” He was still upset with the whole situation when he left for work. I had the day off. So I try to retrace my steps and remember that I dropped the Kleenex in the garbage can and so maybe my keys too. So I look through that garbage…nothing. It is one of the coldest days of the winter and I’m outside rummaging thru trash. Then I wonder maybe it somehow got in the kitchen garbage. Of course, that’s been taken out to the big garbage can (the one that the garbage company empties). Out I go to pull out those bags and sort through the gross, wet, slimy food type trash. There were 3 of those bags! NOTHING. All day long I’m trying to think of where the keys could have gone. I once again searched the house, the garage floor, under shelving units in the garage, all of my jackets, snow pants, under things…NOTHING. I went through all of those garbage bags again. I wore rubber gloves and my hands were frozen like ice cubes. Still nothing. When my husband came home from work, I was outside for the THIRD time sorting through the garbage bags. I was taking out one item at a time and transferring it into a fresh bag. In my mind, the garbage was the only place the keys could be. My husband says something to the effect of having to re-key the house because surely my keys are in the hands of a ne’er do-well! He then stomps into the house. As I’m crouched out on the patio, my hands so cold that I could barely move my fingers, sorting through disgusting garbage, my husband suddenly opens the house door, his arm shoots out with my keys dangling from his fingers. He shouts out, “I found them”. And as fast as he appeared, he disappeared! I ran into the house and he was nowhere to be seen. I called out to him and he answers me from the bedroom at the far end of the house. I asked, “where did you find them?!?” He said, (and I’m not kidding) “they were in MY jacket pocket”!!! I was dumbfounded because there was no scenario that I could think of where I would put MY keys in HIS jacket pocket. I asked how could they be in there. He sheepishly answers, “When I went to start my car, I grabbed your keys by accident and instead of hanging them up, I put them in my pocket”. UGH! Let’s just say there was a lot of apologizing that evening!
WARNING - Somewhat graphic.
I played on a office softball team. Our left fielder John and Center fielder Brian were very athletic and fast. We normally had a 4 outfield player lineup but we were short on players so John and Brian both had to cover a lot of ground.
During the game an opposing hitter lined a shot right into the gap between Brian and John. They collided at full speed.
The game immediately stopped and when we all got to the scene of the collision John and Brian were groggily standing up. John had a deep gash just below the crown in in his hair. Brian was missing a front tooth.
We sent the two of them off to the emergency room as both teams began scouring the field in the hopes of finding Brian’s tooth. We figured we had about a half hour before it was too late to recover with a viable root for replanting.
We couldn’t find the tooth and called the game. Since Brian and John both had family attending to them we went on our separate ways home.
The next day I went to work and was surprised to see Brian (and his fat lip) at work. I was even more surprised after he smiled and I could see his replanted tooth.
I said to Brian,“Where did they find your tooth?”
His answer,“Oh they found it in John’s head!”
The collision had knocked out Brian’s tooth and it became embedded under John’s scalp. When they went to stitch up John’s head they discovered the tooth. Brian said that the doctors told him the blood under John’s scalp did an excellent job of preserving the root and tissue around Brian’s tooth.
thunderous applause
~VOW
I just remembered another animal story…
I caught a Blue-tailed skink and brought it home and put it in my terrarium. It escaped pretty quickly, and I never saw it again.
Until…
Many, many years later, my parents were getting a new rug, and they moved all the furniture, and rolled the old rug up, and there was the skink- as flat as a piece of paper, and perfectly preserved. I should have kept it.
That reminds me of an incident involving an anole lizard. My son was probably around 8 yo at the time. All of the kids were getting anole lizards as pets. So my son got one and kept it in his room. It was in an aquarium type thing with a lid. Our cat knocked the aquarium over at one point and we found the lizard with a much shorter tail. One morning I looked in the aquarium and didn’t see the lizard. I thought, “Oh no, the cat got him”. I didn’t mention it to my son and he didn’t notice because as usual he was in a big rush to get out the door for school. I felt terrible so I secretly went to the pet store during my lunch break, bought another lizard, and got it in the tank before he got home from school. My son was never the wiser until…the next morning. He got out of bed and yelled to me, “Mom, there’s another lizard in here on the lamp!” :smack: Apparently the cat didn’t eat the lizard, it just got out of the tank and took a little walkabout. I then had to fess up about the new lizard. 
Dried-up Anole mummies under furniture were hardly a rarity in my past apartments. haven’t found any since I moved into my house, but I’m sure it’s just a matter of time.
We had a cat, or rather a stray cat had adopted us. Jake spent much of his time outdoors and often disappeared for a day, but had always come back. Then he disappeared for about 4 days and we figured that was the end of Jake. Then he reappeared utterly bedraggled and smelling of skunk. We cleaned him up and life moved on. This all happened late enough in the fall that we had already moved the screens into some shelves in the garage and installed the storm windows.
Come spring and the day that the screens come back and the storm windows go into the garage, we found, sitting on the pile of screens, the dried, scentless skin and bones of the skunk that Jake had obviously killed
This is * exactly * the kind of stuff I was looking for. Good news? We found your tooth. Bad news? It was in someone else’s head!