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too far afield to be found by drone
Wednesday, November 27 2024
With the help of alcohol and diphenhydramine, I'd slept better last night than the night before. But the reality that Charlotte was still missing and spending a second night in the cold Novemeber forest would creep into my thoughts whenever I was awake. I was coming to terms with that reality (as one has to), but I was a long way from true acceptance.
Gretchen had set an alarm for some time before 7:00am so she would be awake for the arrival at that time of a profressional drone pilot she'd hired to scan the forest for her infrared heat signature. His name was Justin and he drove a big pickup truck and was dressed in camouflage, so Gretchen chuckled that he probably wasn't a fan of our political yard signs (which we've yet to take down). Gretchen's father and I joined Gretchen to see the drone pilot, whose name was Justin, do his thing. He had a fancy base station with joystick controls that allowed him to control his drone, which was already so high and far away that it could barely be heard. Justin's drone had two cameras, one an infrared device to look for warm-blooded creatures (which showed as bright points of white on the landscape) and a conventional high-resolution optical camera with zoom, allowing him to investigate what creature was producing that heat. "There's a lot of deer!" he declared. He then zoomed in on one resting on the ground. It being hunting season, he expected to find hunters as well. For $350, he was going to scan the forest for three hours, probably searching an area little less than a square mile in size. I thought it unlikely that Charlotte would be that close to our house and not simply walk home, but there was always a chance that she was injured or caught in a coyote trap, and the drone would be an excellent way to find her in those cases. But if she was dead and not producing a heat signature, the drone was never going to find her. "This is a big woods!" Justin declared, and I agreed. I told him that I thought it unlikely that she was attacked by coyotes, and he thought so too. He said that, in his experience, coyotes generally don't attack other canids unless the dog is very small. He then mentioned a time he'd found a small dog in the forest with some coyotes nearby and used the drone to scare them away. I asked Justin how long a battery in his drone lasted, and he said "about 24 minutes." I asked if he would benefit from access to 120v power, and he said he would, so I ran a 100 foot extension cord to his truck from the garage.
It was a cold frosty morning, so left Justin to do his thing in the driveway while we grazed on baked goods and drank coffee inside.
Meanwhile, the posts on Lost Pets of the Hudson Valley, Nextdoor.com, and Gretchen's Facebook page were getting an enormous amount of attention. Gretchen's post had been shared over 150 times, and the one on Lost Pets of the Hudson Valley had been shared over 700 times, much more than the other poor lost and found creatures. Why was that post getting so much love? Was it the picture I'd chosen? Despite all that publicity, nobody was calling us with leads. Normally we don't answer our phones when randos call because it's always someone inquiring about whether we want to sell one of our properties or trying to sell us an extended warranty for one of our vehicles. But since yesterday morning, we've been answering the phone every time it rang. There had been one wrong number and two real estate inquiries, but nobody (except Gretchen's dear friend Dina calling from Tel Aviv to cheer her up) calling about Charlotte. But then the phone rang this morning and the man on the other end of the line said he thought he'd found our dog. Gretchen almost convulsed with joy, barely able to speak. She said she'd be coming over immediately. At that point, Charlotte had been missing about 33 hours.
First, though, Gretchen had to tell the drone guy to call back his drone, call off the search, and unblock the driveway. He seemed happy for us and gave us a $50 discount, since he'd only been flying his drone for two hours. Though his search had proved fruitless and, as it turned out, would've never found Charlotte, Gretchen was very happy to pay him his fee, as the knowledge that he would be searching for Charlotte had given her a lot of hope and even made it possible for her to get some sleep last night.
Charlotte had been found walking along the side of Route 28A near Morgan Hill Road, about five miles away by road and a little over three miles away north-north east as a cruise missile might fly. The couple who'd found her live on Morgan Hill Road and had been unable to catch her or look at her tags. But they'd stayed with her and gave her two breakfasts. They'd also called a state trooper to maybe help with catching her. While all this was going on, someone driving by stopped and exclaimed "that's the dog I saw on Facebook!" The nice couple with Charlotte then looked at the post on Lost Pets of the Hudson Valley, found our phone number, and called. When Gretchen, Gretchen's father, and Neville arrived in the Bolt, the state trooper was there and Charlotte had yet to be captured. She was, as you would imagine, delighted to see Gretchen and then jumped in the car to be with Neville. The fact that Charlotte was so far from home suggested that she'd chased after some creature and gotten lost, much as Ramona did in the east-central Adirondacks back in 2018. Ten or fifteen years ago, I used to occasionally take dogs into the forest across (north of) Dug Hill Road, where a deep ravine blocks access to a vast wilderness. But I'd never taken Charlotte there, and if she chased some creature down into and then back up out of that ravine, she would quickly find herself in a completely alien landscape. And if she got disoriented there, she might easily get lost, not being seen again by a Facebook-consuming human until she stumbled out onto Route 28A over three miles away.
When Gretchen returned with Charlotte, I greeted her enthusiastially and made sure she was covered with a soft sage-green blanket when she laid down on the couch. (She'd probably been dreaming of that blanket while shivering on a wet pile of leaves for the past couple nights.) It wasn't long before she was sleeping, probably making up for all the sleep she hadn't gotten. By then we'd updated all the lost dog posts, and the threads quickly turned into massive celebrations. I don't care what your politics are, the finding of a lost dog is a bipartisan cause for jubilation.
Gretchen was now adamant that we get tracking devices for our dogs, so I researched the issue as best I could. For the kind of lost Charlotte had just been, an Apple AirTag would've eventually led us to her, since all she would have to do would be to go within a couple hundred feet of someone with an iPhone. In the middle of the wilderness (such as most of the Adirondacks and the large blocks of green in the Catskills), though, an AirTag wouldn't be able to log updates. We could get a tracker that logs GPS data using the cellphone network, but that wouldn't work in most places in the Adirondacks. I've been wanting to build my own homebrew LoRa-based system, which would depend on fixed base stations (or, during searches, mobile LoRa scanners). But I've been unable to get LoRa devices to work reliably in the small sizes necessary. Since our main concern is the Catskills, particularly as winter closes in and we stop going to the Adirondack cabin, it's looking like we'll be getting some cellphone-based device.
While Gretchen was at work, I spent some time up in the laboratory doing my usual things. But eventually I came down the first floor, where Gretchen's parents were reading or doing Thanksgiving-related food prep. One of things I wanted to do was to paint the ugly patched-white drywall exposed by our now-missing refrigerator with some old pastel blue paint I found in the garage. [REDACTED] After I'd painted the drywall and used plastic welding and an old nail to fix a polyethylene paint brush handle I'd just broken, I made us all a lunch of vegan BLTs. There were fancy BLTs, with mushrooms, onions, and for Gretchen's father and me, pickles. I then washed all the dishes I'd just made, as I find that watching Gretchen's parents wash our dishes is traumatic. The thing that they do that drives me crazy is that they just let the hot water run endlessly down the sink even when they're not using it. Having built the systems that make that water hot, I consider it a precious resource, not one to be so thoughtlessly wasted. But they're from another generation without any of the conservation habits that Gretchen and I practice as a matter of habit. Another example: Gretchen's parents never seem to do anything to a light switch except flip it to the on position. And at some point I saw Gretchen's mother just letting the cold water run while watching it. I asked what she was doing and she said she was waiting for the water to turn hot before washing her hands. Two things: the hot water on that sink is plumbed blackwards from her expectations, so the water was never going to get hot. And: who the fuck waits for water to get warm before washing their hands?
Later in the afternoon I started sipping booze and then went to work some on the new stone wall I've been building at the bottom of the Woodshed Trail. But it got dark while I was out there, and I eventually had to call it quits. At around that time, Gretchen's father returned from JK's liquor with a bunch of wine for Thanksgiving.
Later after Gretchen got back from jubilant day at the bookstore (nothing could piss her off once Charlotte had returned), the four of us all drove to Bearsville and had dinner near the roaring fireplace at the Bear Cantina. (Tonight I started referring to it as "my favorite Mexican restaurant in the whole world.") I introduced Gretchen's father to their amazing habañero sauce, and it seemed to surprise him how much he like it. It's very hot, but it's also got a flavor you just want to keep adding to your food.
Charlotte on the ride back home from where she was found.
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Gretchen with Neville and Charlotte soon after bringing Charlotte back from where she was found this morning.
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The photo I'd sent to Lost Pets of the Hudson Valley. It was taken Nov. 1st, 2023.
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