Need help identifying an electronic thingie

Ok, weird story. I took the garbage out last night, and this morning I went out to throw away some odds and ends, and placed on top of my garbage bag in the can were a pair of work gloves and this strange cable.

The cable is about a foot long, on either end it has a flat part where a jack would be, but coming out of it is a thin red wire and a thin white wire. The middle part of the wire is coiled around itself like a phone cord. It almost looks automotive in nature, but I’ve never seen anything like it.

We’ve had some vandalism in the area, as well as some major power lines go down due to sabotage, and I’m not sure if i should be worried about this or not. Its a residential area, and in order to get to the trash you would have to be in my backyard so somebody was definitely trespassing, and the fact that the gloves were thrown away along with the wire makes me more than a little nervous.

Thanks in advance and sorry I don’t have a picture of it yet.

C’mon, surely you could be a little more lucid with the description? What sort of flat part? What is at the other end of the cable? How long is it? How thick is the insulating sheath? What is it about the cable that makes you describe it as strange?(it doesn’t sound very strange to me)