It’s a hearing aid controller. She can turn the volume on her hearing aids up or down and can change the mode to fit the circumstance. If we’re out in the woods looking for birds, she’ll use a different setting than when we’re in a noisy restaurant. (Not that we’ve been in a noisy restaurant lately.) The controller has a clip on the back so she can hang it on a pocket, hem, or collar on her shirt so it will always be handy.
And it is always handy. Except when it’s not.
Weeks ago, when we were staying at the campground at Falcon State Park, on a particular day, we went lots of places and did lots of things. That night we couldn’t find her hearing aid controller. We looked everywhere in the bus, Jeep, and yard. The next day we drove around to some of the places we had been the day before. One of those places was Salineno, down by the river, where we had been birding for the seedeater. Judy looked all around on the ground where we had been parked the day before. Nothing. We were chatting with a couple we had met there, and Judy mentioned her dilemma. The woman she was talking to said she had noticed something earlier that she didn’t recognize. It was hanging in a tree right next to where Judy had been looking on the ground. Judy went to investigate, and sure enough, someone unknown to us had found the controller where the Jeep had been parked and hung it in the tree right next to that spot so whoever lost it could find it and it wouldn’t have been run over in the meantime.
Nice somebodies. Somebody to find it and protect it. Somebody to notice it and point it out to us. Lucky us!