Good morning and welcome to Saturday Snippets where my muse struts her stuff and gives me a word…a one-word prompt I still have no clues as to where she gets the ideas for my prompt from … this week I gave my muse a break… the truth is I ignored her something I will probably pay for big time next week but I love a challenge and this week I was certainly challenged by my muse…she paid me back big time…Today’s prompt is “Lost”…oh my what a challenge this is…

The Lost River begins and ends in a closed basin in northern California and southern Oregon in the United States.

Lost and Found.

Vaccum-Packed Frogs…

After a three-month-long tracing process to find the owners or pay out any claims, the airlines sell any remaining lost baggage to the Unclaimed Baggage Center. Clothes are dry-cleaned or laundered, jewellery is cleaned and appraised, and electronics are wiped of their memory caches and tested. Once, sorters at the Unclaimed Baggage Center discovered 50 vacuum-packed frogs packed into someone’s luggage. No word on the state of the frogs’ existence, or exactly what type of frogs they were, but the find was notable enough to become an Unclaimed Baggage Center legend.

But a Missile Guidance System?… The functional system was outfitted with a plaque that read, “Handle with extreme caution. I am worth my weight in gold.” After taking a few minutes to collect themselves, Unclaimed Baggage Center employees contacted the Air Force and returned the fighter jet gear…

There have been many tales, books, and films on lost cities on land and under the sea…some have been found/solved and some are still a mystery waiting to be solved…

The dream of El Dorado, a lost city of gold, led many a conquistador on a fruitless trek into the rainforests and mountains of South America. But it was all wishful thinking. The “golden one” was actually not a place but a person – as recent archaeological research confirms.

Fascinatingly, many aspects of this interpretation of events have been validated by painstaking archaeological research – research that also reveals the exceptional skill and scale of gold production in Colombia at the time of European arrival in 1537.

Some lost species have been found…

In 2017, Re: wild started a global quest to find its 25 most wanted lost species—and since then, Team Re: wild has found EIGHT. That’s right. More than 1/3 of a list of animals and plants scientists feared lost have been FOUND.

https://www.rewild.org/lost-species

Lost and Found.

Maybe you’ve lost a pair of sunglasses. Maybe you’ve found someone else’s earring. Maybe those items turn up in a lost-and-found area somewhere — a hotel, an amusement park, a railway station or a school. That’s great and all, but it’s likely that your experience pales in comparison to these cool, unique and weird artefacts that have turned up in lost and founds around the world.

The Bureau of Found Objects in the southern end of Paris is a massive repository of the city’s lost items. The centralized collection was formed in the 1800s during the time of Napoleon and now receives up to 700 items a day that have been found on the metro, in restaurants, museums, airports, streets and other locations. Although some of the items eventually are claimed, many are not, including a real human skull that was found in a Paris train station near the catacombs. The city’s catacombs include 200 miles (322 kilometres) of tunnels that have walls neatly lined with about 7 million human skeletons, some dating back more than 1,200 years. Although no one at the bureau quite knows how the skull was removed, chances are some “body” is missing it…

Lost and Found.

There is no end to the objects found in a lost and found…One set of objects, however, prompts a string of questions about the circumstances that would lead to its residence in a hotel for abandoned things: a wedding dress and matching shoes, all of which are new, clean and in a garment bag as if it were the day they were to be worn. Although the bridal set’s origins are a mystery, bureau employees point to a well-worn story that it was left in the back of a cab after a lovers’ quarrel — and never sought again…how about finding a 5.8-carat diamond and platinum ring inside a sock and tucked in a suitcase…an unclaimed suitcase I will add…

But an unclaimed headstone fully engraved…eventually, it was bought by a visitor to the unclaimed baggage centre and turned into a coffee table…also never claimed. a prosthetic leg, with an athletic shoe, attached, that still awaits its owner.

Even Uber Cars have created a lost and found index…with Saturday Night being the most likely time to leave something behind even a “live lobster ” on occasion…

London Undergrounds Lost and Found Department highlight the sheer volume..there really are some careless people about…

• 12,000 umbrellas
• 11,000 keys
• 1,300 wallets and purses
• 120 bags of shopping
• 70 pairs of glasses
• 62 dummies
• 30 laptops
• 21 bottles of fragrance
• 8 sets of false teeth
• 6 guitars
• A cat
• A lizard
• A hamster
• A full-size house carpet
• A judge’s wig
• A prosthetic leg
• A 6ft Inflatable dinosaur
• £15,000 in cash!….wow that is astounding…

I hope you have enjoyed to today’s Saturday Snippets ..will it make you more careful? As always I look forward to your comments x