Tuesday evening I received a call from Dennis Boothby about a lost ring in Bangor. He provided me with a phone number and name and asked me to call the lady.
I immediately called Lily and got her story. Apparently, her boyfriend, Josh, had tossed her ring and it was somewhere in her yard. I assumed it was her backyard. I told her if it’s in your yard, and not a public space, then searching for it tomorrow afternoon when she got out of work should be fine with no danger of it being found and picked up.
I arrived at her house a few minutes early and give her a call. She said she was on her way home and her boyfriend would be there shortly. I asked her to describe where in your backyard is it and I’ll start looking. She stated it wasn’t in her backyard but in her front yard. Her boyfriend had thrown it from the porch over a forsythia bush then over a car and over her head into the neighbor’s lawn. She had already spoken with the neighbors and they were fine with us searching. I said to myself at that moment “oh no, if it’s in the front yard with the sidewalk and street, There is a chance it could’ve been picked up by somebody walking on the sidewalk”. I started searching the neighbor’s lawn. I then searched the strip between the sidewalk and the street. I received many signals, but none that were on top of Soil. I was using a large coil as it covers the ground very efficiently. However, in town conditions and close to sidewalks there are tons of signals along with a lot of electromagnetic interference. This generally means a background “chatter”. For someone new to metal detecting this can sound like a constant “roar”. With experience it’s easy to ignore.
About 10 minutes after starting the search, Josh arrived home. I sat down the detector where I was and greeted him and said I would like him to do some coins tosses so that I could see his distance and direction. Josh told me he was a ball player in high school. I had him throw five pennies and I saw one bounce on the neighbor’s lawn finally; the other four I just did not see where they landed. I continued searching and told Josh the metal detector was making a lot of noises but I was listening for one particular signal and visual identification number. I searched the neighbor’s entire lawn, the strip between the lawn and the road and the flowerbeds. Then I went to the next neighbor’s lawn. After a short while Lily arrived.
At some point, I told them that I may have to put on a smaller coil because I was receiving multiple signals quite often. I then asked if the neighbor’s car had been parked there when the incident happened the previous evening. They were unsure. I said to myself I need to look under that car and search the grass close to it. Metal detectors do not work well close to big metal objects such as cars.
As I got close to the rear tire of the vehicle I saw a glint of gold in the asphalt. I looked closer and it was the ring! I stepped back and motioned for Lily to come over. I told her I wanted a few pictures and for her to see how the metal detector worked. She said OK and started to detect for the ring. I gave her a few pointers on how to use the detector….you have to be closer to the ground and to move a little faster. Then I gave suggestions on where to search… move over here just a little bit, then check out over there close to that tire. Once she got close to the tire, I heard a scream of delight. I think her words were “OMG, it’s right here! There’s my ring!” Then she asked me “did you know it was there?” I said ” I did”, yet wanted her to “find” it.
The ring is still on the ground, very close to the back tire. If you open the picture up, you can actually see it!
The ring was actually embedded a little bit in the asphalt and appeared to have been run over at least once.
It looked to me to be undamaged, which was very lucky.
In this last photo, it shows the distance the ring traveled! Josh tossed the ring from the porch of the BLUE house over the forsythia bush, over her car, over the neighbor’s lawn and into the driveway of the NEXT neighbor . Josh certainly has a good arm. The smiles from both of them is what makes a metal detectionist’s day!! As Dennis from the Ringfinders of Maine says “we have the best job in the world”.
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