lost and found

A couple of weeks ago we lost our Orangutan, otherwise known as Rang (or Wang if you haven't learned to say your R's yet).  Not just kind of lost, like lost in the way we often lose things and then find them stuffed in someone's backpack or bed or coat pocket.  No, he was really lost.  I know this because I turned every thing in our house, barn and shed upside down and inside out looking for him.  He just wasn't stuffed anywhere.  We were all pretty sad.  Admittedly I was the saddest.  This little guy has been with us since Iris was a baby and has taken on real personality in this home.  Rang is always up to mischief.  When Iris used to go to my mom's three days a week (when Andy was still teaching) Rang lived with Nonnie and he would always surprise us with something silly when we arrived.  He might have been dressed in a new outfit, or hanging from the light, or eating a banana.  Then, when he came to live with us, he got even sillier.  He sings the abc's all jumbled up, he gets wild and flies around the room, he plays tricks on people.  He is really, really funny.

Somehow, for a few days we didn't realize he was gone.  Then one morning Elsa woke up and the first thing she said was "I looked for Rang on his shelf and he wasn't there".  As soon as she said it I knew it was true.   I came upstairs and he wasn't on his shelf.  He wasn't anywhere.  For the first day I looked without too much vigor, assuming he would show up as most things do.  Luckily no one was losing it over his disappearance (except me).  By the second day I was making phone calls to any place we'd been in the last week.  The food co-op, the dentist, the thrift store....it wasn't looking good.  I broke the news to my mom and she voiced what I was already thinking (now brace yourself): "what if Rang is lying somewhere in the dirt and missing us?"  Agony.  Now I couldn't get him out of my head and I was definitely driving Andy crazy (mind you I was doing my obsessing out of ear shot of the girls, the last thing I needed was them to catch the fervor).  So, after a couple more days of staying up late and running (just one more time) over every place we'd been in the last week trying to reconstruct where we left Rang, I decided to take a shot at listing him as missing.  No, not with the police (I might have if that was an option), but on our local internet bulletin board.  I knew this was a long shot because that bulletin board service is located in a town about 45 minutes away, read by a pretty select few and the kind of thing most people just delete out of their mailbox without reading.

Lost:  One beloved orange Orangutan, about 8" tall.

It was a tiny post way at the very bottom of the list.  It looked pathetic and lost in the sea of other notices. 

But then.... here's the really great part that still makes my heart sing: 

The very next day I receive an email with the subject line:  lost Orangutan.  The email reads: "I think I have Him!!!!   I found a sweet little primate on Hwy 56 in front of my house.....he is missing an eye. I posted him on my facebook hoping to find his owner. I will attach a picture. Oh I hope he is yours. He has been so sad without his family."  And right there with the email was a picture of our Rang sitting on this nice lady's dashboard.

It really was our naughty Rang, now missing an eye.  Hwy 56??  Did he jump out the car window? Posting him on facebook?  Trying to find his owner?  All too good to be true! As it turns out, this sweet woman and her children spotted Rang on the highway, drove past thinking he was roadkill, then turned around when they realized he was a bedraggled stuffed animal and went back and picked him up.  Who does this??   But there he was.  

That very day Rang was reunited with his very happy family.  His missing eye was replaced with a slightly larger but still very Rang-o-tang-like eye and he was fed a proper meal, snuggled and showered with love.  This mama has stopped obsessing and has tried to learn a lesson about not getting attached to material possessions.  But this little guy, well, he worked his way into our hearts with a bit of magic.  And perhaps, with a bit of magic, he found his way back.