Alright, at the time of this writing, about two months ago, the human finally received a new phone on Christmas that his mate got for him. Things were good. Of course this story is not about that, this is what happened just a week and a half ago. Now unlike the other ones, this story should be shorter.

This all started on a Sunday. He and his mate came home after attending church and he placed his phone kitchen counter. I should now mention that he has a bad habit with his phone. He tends to lay his phone down in odd locations and not remembering where he put it and taking a bit of time to find it again. Right now he knew it was on the kitchen counter.

Due to his type of work, he would collect trash that he had to get rid of periodically. Since he lived in the countryside and not inside of a city limits, that was not a problem. So he changed his clothes left his phone on the counter and went outside and proceeded to move the mostly wood and paper trash to a better location way at the back of his property for disposal. After that was done and set up he came back in. Did some various things inside and would check outside every so often to see how things were going. At one point he went to get his phone on the counter where he last remembered putting it when he came home.

It was not there.

That was the last place he remembers putting it, and his mate denied ever touching it. So they did the "I'll call the phone and you listen for it" for a good hour in and then around the house. No luck, and battery was nowhere near dead. Then it occurred to them to call Provider Z's customer service and see if they could "ping" the phone and see where it was. His mate contacted them and said that there is a creek running along the back of their property and it was near there. That is where the trash was taken. No wonder they couldn't find the phone.

So he could see on the map where it was and also where she was with her phone. So she followed his directions out towards it. She looked around in that area but couldn't find it. He directed her a bit more until she got to the point where he said it should be right in front of you near your feet.

Oh crap...

OPEN NEXT SPOILER

This is what was fished out of the bottom of the burn area where he was burning the trash. That was a Google Pixel if I remember correctly. He has no clue how it got back there. He never remembers picking it up off the kitchen counter.

Fortunately, she made sure that he had insurance on this phone due to all of the other phone mishaps he's had.

Unfortunately, that model is on back-order and he is once again...again, back to his old phone until then. Which now only seems to want to do texting and calls. None of the apps really want to work anymore.

Lastly, later when his mate was talking with customer service about the insurance claim, the rep had a hard time getting his head around how the phone was burned since even when she explained it, he still could not understand what a "burn barrel" was or why you would have one. But he did admit that he was most definitely a "city boy" and really didn't understand living in the countryside.