l lost my camera. Again. The same one that slipped out of my pocket while I was huckleberry picking in August of 2016, only to be found, still working, by someone else hiking on the mountain top a week later. This time, I think it’s gone for good, and with its case this time, a case I bought at Walt Disney World some years ago. I’m not sure where I lost it (other than between my front hall and my studio), so I don’t know where all to look or which lost and founds to check. I’ve looked everywhere I can think of. I checked the last lost and found on my list this afternoon, even though I couldn’t come up with a reasonable explanation for how I would have dropped it there.

On the plus side, I only lost a bit more than a day of photos, and I met some of my neighbors in the building my studio is in when I went to ask if anyone had found a camera in the parking lot. These neighbors included a big and friendly and well behaved black and white dog, which was an added bonus. I had a backup camera on hand (which it took me a while to find in the house, but that I did manage). Also, there are many worse things I could have lost: my phone, my car keys, my house keys, my studio keys, to name four items I had with me at the time I thought I had the camera. (Keys are a particular concern of mine right now as my truck keys are having a vacation in South Dakota; I dropped them there while Mr. K and I were taking a trip I haven’t had a chance to write about yet.)

My current wild theory is that it tumbled out of my bag while I was unloading things from the car to take into the studio and I didn’t notice because it was in its case so wouldn’t have made much noise and it was a black object falling on a black background so it wouldn’t have stood out visually. Then a bird of prey scooped it up after I went in the building, flew off and dropped it elsewhere after finding it was not a fat snack. Why a bird of prey? Because I found two feathers in the parking lot when I was searching.

I was really upset about this at first, and for hours and hours after, and periodically after that (this happened this past Friday), but now I’m feeling sort of okay. Yes, I will miss my little camera. But the new one, the former backup, does take better photos, and isn’t held together with Gorilla tape, and doesn’t have a cracked view screen. Maybe this was the universe’s way to force me to move on from my trusty Elph. Still, I wish it had been a voluntary decision on my part, not yet another instance where I failed to pay close enough attention to something.