Cordless Phones and Dumpsters

"I just heard the strangest noise-well, strange because of where it's coming from," Sally said.

"Really? What type of noise? And where?" I asked, wondering what she wanted me to do about it.

Sometimes I felt more like her mother. Of course, we took turns mothering each other.

"In the dumpster...well, it's beeping, and it won't stop. Do you think someone threw some type of alarm in there? Maybe an alarm clock? Maybe they didn't realize it was still working when they threw it out."

Suddenly the realization hit me. Didn't I just take out my trash this morning? Had the phone just happened to fall off the nightstand and into the trashcan?

"Um, let me take a look," I told her.

She followed as I grabbed a stepladder from the basement, left behind by the maintenance man, who seemed to use it so much here that he must have decided to leave it permanently. Sally opened the doors for me, and just before heading out, I grabbed a snow shovel that was stored in the basement.

I set up the stepladder and began carefully moving trash bags around. It was definitely my missing phone that was screaming at me to be found.

The good news was that I could still hear the beep; the bad news was, all the trash looked the same. And since it was an early September afternoon, it was still warm, which didn't help, as the odor of curdled milk and used kitty litter permeated the air.