Yesterday I spent a good amount of time helping to stack some 400 bales of hay on a couple of trailers for some good people and after word I realized my cell phone (case and all) were lost!  Panic stricken, my thoughts immediately went to “the phone is inside one of those trailers”!

When helping to stack a trailer you don’t have much time to do much thinking or standing around.  It’s go, go, go until the job is done.  The folks on the ground are picking up the bales, walking to the trailer and throwing the bales at you.  You have to grab the bale as quickly as you can and do something with it, even if it’s wrong.  Hopefully what you do with it is actually helping to keep the trailer and the stack organized and filling.

So, here I am with a missing phone and I just spent the last hour and a half loading these two trailers.  Where else would my phone be?  Deep within the bowels of that stack of hay bales, no doubt about it.

I turned to Wapiti and asked him to call my cell phone, which he promptly does and he says it is ringing.  I walk slowly around the two trailers listening intently within the stacks for that tell tale sound of the ringing…..nothing.  One of the owners says that if they find it when they unload they will either send it to me through the mail or will drop it by on one of their trips to Idaho.  I’m relieved somewhat by that and wish them a safe trip back to SLC.

Tracker and I begin to walk slowly across the field we had just picked up the hay from.  Wapiti continues to redial.  As Tracker is approaching one of the crossing points into the field, he hears the phone and then sees it laying in the field still in it’s case.  He holds it up and says, “It’s for you”!  I take it and answer it “Hello!  It’s me!”  And I hear Wapiti on the other end say, “I’m glad!  Let’s go get a beer”!  Which we did and everyone was happy.  End of story.

The last phone I lost went into the creek and is probably bubbling near some catfish lair.

Bears Butt

July 21, 2012