A week ago Saturday (December 22), George and I took Alder
(poodle) and Maple (golden retriever) hunting for gray partridges in a harvested
wheat field. It was not a bad day for
this time of year. Hardly any snow on
the ground, temps in the mid-30s, occasional rain spitting. We flushed a couple of coveys, but George
didn’t have a good shot at either one. In the first flush, we had just finished
having the dogs search through the cover on the slope in the picture below.
After the dogs had covered the slope, we were paying more
attention to our footing getting up to the top of the slope and ignoring the
dogs. Alder went tearing over the top
and kicked up a flock on the other side of the slope. Later, as we were coming
to the top of a different rise, I was insisting the dogs stay, although they
were acting birdy, because I didn’t want them rushing ahead again. We were both focused on the dogs when a flock
took off very close by, and dropped low and out of sight, fast. I’m sure the dogs were both wishing for
better hunting companions. Obviously we
need to work on our human-dog teamwork.
Anyway, the day took a bad turn soon after that flush. We were cutting back to the van when I
realized I didn’t have my iPhone. We tried to retrace our path through the field. Did you know that a few thousand acres of mud
with leftover wheat straw looks pretty much the same in all directions? Our footprints didn’t show in the semi-frozen
mud. We weren’t sure exactly which rises
and draws we had walked through.
After about an hour of fruitless tramping around, my initial
panic subsided and it dawned on me that there might be an app for finding a
lost iPhone. Using George’s phone, I did an app search and came up with Find My
iPhone right away. Hooray!!! It was just
what the doctor ordered for this situation.
Using George’s iPhone, it would show the location of the lost phone on a
map. It installed quickly and asked me
to log in with the account of the lost phone.
My euphoria increased with each password character I tapped in. I was mentally writing a draft of my 5-star
review for this wonderful app. Wait. What
is this message? “You have entered a
valid Apple ID and password, but this iPhone is not registered on iCloud. For
this app to work, the lost device must be registered on iCloud and have iCloud
turned on in settings.”
AAAARRRRGGGGHHHH!
I told George to take his phone back RIGHT AWAY. I had to get it out of my possession before I
slung it out into the muddy fields and we had to replace two iPhones.
After some more tramping through the fields, I remembered
that I had looked at the Google Map satellite image before we turned back to
the van. Perhaps I had dropped the phone
when I was returning it to my coat pocket with cold gloved hands. I could picture the Google image. We had been
on a ridge approximately in the middle of a V formed by the road curving below
the field. I had calmed down enough to
be trusted to hold George’s phone again.
I followed his iphone map to approximately the map location I last
remembered.
We tromped up and down the ridge in the mud a while longer. George
continued to call my phone periodically, but we could not hear the soft
ringtone in the wind. It was George that
saw the orange edge of the Otter Box case and the reflective Apple logo on the
back of the phone, sticking up from a furrow in the field at about the location
where I had looked at the map. The phone
had a few sprinkles of rain, but had suffered no damage.
We were ecstatic, me because I had my phone back, George because
he was the one that had found it. He
milked the moment for all it was worth.
He demanded I sing “You are my hero” all that way back to the van.
The story doesn’t end there.
On the way home, I set up my phone with an iCloud account so
I could use the Find My iPhone app if the phone got lost again. As soon as we got home, I wanted to try it
out to see how well it worked.
The rain was a little heavier by the time we got home. I gave George my iPhone and sent him to the
far corner of the yard. I took George’s
phone and signed on to Find My iPhone from inside the house. Sure enough, George’s phone showed a green
dot in the corner of our yard. It wasn’t exactly where George was standing, but
I didn’t expect pinpoint accuracy with a phone GPS. I went out to tell George
it worked.
“You still have to find the phone,” he said.
“I found it,” I said.
“Look, it’s showing a green dot over there by the fence. It’s within about 20 feet.”
“You better go get it, then,” he said.
“Give me the phone.
It’s raining.”
“It’s not on me. You
have to find it.”
What!!!??? Seems
George had decided to turn the Find My iPhone test into a real test. In the frickin’ rain. With MY phone as the guinea pig. So, after asking him at least 5 more times if
he was kidding (because I couldn’t believe he would put my phone down in the
yard in the rain), I was finally convinced and went looking for the phone. At the edge of our yard is a 10-foot wide
ditch, which we leave unmowed as wildlife habitat. I’ve planted trees and shrubs among the tall
grass and have a few brush piles for cover.
I went to near the fence where the signal indicated the
phone probably was. “You’re close,” said
George. (He was risking his own life by
being within earshot of me.)
“It’s right under the pine tree there at the edge of the
ditch,” he said. “It should be right in
front of you.” I looked all over the
ground near the indicated pine tree. I
saw no phone. George, muttering about my wretched eyesight, came to help. He didn’t see the phone, either.
“I’ could have sworn it was this pine,” he said, “but maybe
it was that one.” I’ve planted three sapling
pines on that side of the ditch. There
was no phone under the second one. There was no phone under the third one.
I recanted all of the “You are my hero” verses I’d sung in
the wheat field after we found the phone the first time.
We looked under all three pines again. The rain was getting heavier. In the
meantime, all four dogs had been bounding around us, happy that their people
are outside playing in the ditch. It dawned
on me that one of the dogs was Maple. Maple, who is notorious for picking up
anything and everything. Uh, oh. I had the sinking feeling that Maple must
have picked up the phone. George had put
the phone where the ground was fairly clear of vegetation, but Maple would only
have had to carry it a couple of feet to drop it into dense vegetation or in one
of the big piles of sticks.
George tried phoning my iPhone. We didn’t hear a ring. (As an aside, the Find My iPhone app can make
the lost phone emit a loud tone for two minutes, even if the lost phone is set
to mute. We probably would have heard
that tone, if we’d known the feature existed.
But I had not acquainted myself with all the app features and, standing
the rain in the yard, I didn’t have the presence of mind to review the help
section.)
“Maple,” I said, “Find mine.” It’s the command I use for scent articles and
for having Maple find misplaced toys.
Maple turned and went bouncing down the ditch. She’s looking for a toy, I thought. I went back to looking through the tall grass
for the phone. A few seconds later,
George yelled. “Kelly, Maple has your phone in her mouth.”
The day had a certain symmetry. George went from hero to dunderhead. Maple
went from thieving devil to retrieving angel.
Guess I have to keep them both.
Today, by the way, is our 10-year anniversary. We’re celebrating with a take-and-bake pizza
from Papa Murphy’s and a movie on the DVR. Living it up
on the Palouse.
