Where Did They Go?

Life is full of mysteries. Items in our lives inexplicably disappear and are found with no explanation, leaving you standing there scratching your head with a look of utter confusion on your face.

This is one of those stories.

Longtime readers of this blog may know we are in love with the milk from Lady Lane Farms. Milk, chocolate milk, half-and-half, cream - anytime we need any of that, we get it from them, either at the Beaverton Farmer's Market during the season or at New Seasons out of season. Their milk comes in glass bottles - half gallon, quart, and pint sizes - for which we pay $1.50 deposit each. When we return them, to the booth or New Seasons, we get the credit.

We drink a fairly decent amount of dairy for two people, so when I go back to the grocery store I usually have three or four of these to return. After rinsing them out, they go out to the garage, and then I carefully place them in the back of the Escape - nicely padded with towels so they don't bang together - for the trip back to the store.

Yesterday we brought Misaki with us and planned to stop at a park on the way to the store for a quick walk, so when we went out to the garage I had one hand holding Misaki's leash and Wifey went to get the mail. With my other hand I lined up the empty glass bottles on the bumper, planning to put them in the back when I had two hands after putting Misaki on Wifey's lap.

You see where this is going don't you?

I put Misaki on Wifey's lap, walked around the back of the car past the bottles on the bumper, got in, put on my seat belt, turned on the car, backed the car out of the garage, closed the garage door, backed into the street, put the car in Drive, and headed off towards the store.

When I got to the store I went to the back of the car to grab the bottles, opened up the back door...and found zero glass bottles. Um. What? Oh. Damn.

Shit. Oops.

Apparently six dollars worth of glass bottles were lying shattered in the middle of the street near home. Yay me.

I hurriedly did my shopping and we stopped for a quick walk and bathroom break for Misaki on the way home. When we did get back home roughly an hour had passed. As we drove into the neighborhood, about four turns and three stop signs from the house, I slowed down, both of us keeping an eye out for broken glass I felt obligated to clean up.

Two turns from home we found the first bottle, the pint size, laying on the asphalt completely fine without even a crack. Interesting...but I stopped and put in the back of the car. One turn from home there was a nice pile of glass in the street, but not nearly the two half gallon and one quart bottle's worth of glass I expected. We pulled back into the driveway...and saw no other glass.

We quickly packed the groceries away and grabbed two dust pans, two brooms, gloves, and a Home Depot bucket to clean up the pile of glass we had seen in front of the neighbor's house. We hurried down to the corner, slipped on our gloves, picked up the big chunks (which included the top, clearly a half gallon bottle), and cleaned up the glass as best we could.

When we finished we looked in the bucket, then at at each, and both asked, "Where's the rest of it?"

See, the glass in the bucket looked like it came only from the half gallon - it wasn't very much. That means another half gallon and a quart are inexplicably missing. Where could they possibly have gone?

I have some theories.

1 - They didn't break when they fell and someone else picked them up. Or they did break and someone cleaned them up. In either case, thank you neighbor, whoever you are.

2 - They fell off and rolled under a parked car (I didn't get down and look under every car).

3 - They didn't fall off until much later, which means they were bouncing around in much heavier traffic. Whoops.

4 - A raccoon took them away to barter them for drugs from a coyote (everyone knows coyote's have the best drugs).

That's all I've got; some may be more likely than others. Either way, those two bottles have disappeared without a trace, which to me is just crazy. Meanwhile, I screwed myself out of six bucks, which is almost an entire gallon of gas, which would mean I could drive to and from work one more day. Does this mean I get a day off now?

Any of my three dear readers have any ideas on what may have happened to them?