Found a phone in my garden - isolated property - shit scared

[ScarredBunny]

Name changed for this - Sorry if this seem trivial, I know people are dealing with far bigger things at the moment.

I found a phone lying on the ground, about 5 yards from my house.

We live in an isolated property about a mile away from the first road. We have not have any visitors , maintenance people for many weeks (obviously). Delivery drivers, yes, but they would not have any reason to go to this part of the garden/couldn't access it during daytime without us seeing something.
At first I assumed it belonged to one of us, but no!
Phoned the police, have a ref./case number, etc. but they're busy and will get back to us when they can.
The police said to take the phone indoors and wait for their call/visit.

I am worried that the next visit is going to be from whomever the phone belongs to.
The phone is dead as a dodo but I assume it still can be found?

What should do?

@ScarredBunny you said earlier a gun would make you feel safer which is why I questioned your country of origin.

Believe me with the UK gun laws you would not feel safer.

@CrazyTimesAreOccurring - so sorry wrong name!

@Yesterdayforgotten - thanks but I did !

@TimeForChange123 - thanks for keeping an eagle eye on the thread!
My typing is bad and getting worse at this point, sorry about that. Do move on if it's too much for you.

@justasking111 - France. Had a hunting gun there some years ago, on the advice of the gendarmes. Isolated property also, and trespassers who were definitely armed. Again, following the gendarmes advice, I used it, a few times shooting up to the sky. Apparently if they realised you have a gun too, they move on, it worked for me. This was in a region I call the armpit of France; anyone guess where?

I don't know much about UK gun law, but when you hear that you can be prosecuted for using too much force to restrain a trespasser, a gun doesn't seem a good option here.

@Ethelmayfergus

OP found the 'phone yesterday morning and called the Police at 10am because she was so scared.

Not sure why you said 'aren't you braver at 11am than 11pm' the found 'phone didn't happen last night.

@TimeForChange123, if you managed to read the thread, I didn't phone the Police 'because I was so scared', I phoned the police after discussing it with DCs and DH and finding it was probably the best thing to do.
Do you not see it would be like opening a can of worms not to speak with the Police? Who is the owner of the phone, the person who dropped it or someone else? Why would we have any business keeping a phone that doesn't belong to us? Why would we want to keep a phone that just appeared from nowhere?
I was surprised the Police told me to bring it inside the house, i would have though they would say not to touch it and wait for advice. And I didn't like having it in the house , no. It's not nice to think that someone you don't know might locate their phone inside your house.

Don't start your aimless arguments with @EthelMayFergus now, you don't seem capable of folowing a line of thought..
Think, timeforchange, Think! Thinking is SO important!

Sounds as though your dog was barking at a person. Dogs don’t tend to fix onto foxes, they chase them. A fox will always run from a dog.
Only time my dog fixed on something barking, it was a hedgehog, as it had rolled into a ball. But a hedgehog wouldn’t have an iphone..

Sorry OP, didn't realise that your thread title 'shit scarred (sic) posted 9 hours after you 'phoned the Police didn't mean you were actually scared

My dogs are the same. They'd chase a fox given the chance but with a person they'll stand their ground and bark. We once had some of the shale(?) stolen from the top of our roof during the night - they didn't get much because the dogs sounded the alarm

Is there any chance someone could have confused your house with the one half a mile away? Could that have anything of value like a quad bike? Just thinking of reasons someone might approach on foot

Pig stealing is definitely a thing.

I live near a pig farm and years ago the pig rustlers came one night to steal some pigs. Now pigs are angry creatures with sharp teeth and the one farm animal i would be scared of being cornered by. Pig rustlers obviously thought the same so shot the pigs dead before loading them on the lorry. Then realised that pigs are very heavy and couldn’t load the dead pigs onto the lorry. The police arrived at some point and chased the pig rustlers in their lorry. Pig rustlers crashed the lorry and shots were fired! Was like the Wild West!

My area has had a spate of night time break ins as people are being lack with door locking etc as everyone’s in flip flop holiday mode.

@SirVixofVixHall @RealLifeHotWaterBottle - Gulp! so maybe the three of us were there. He was barking at a dark corner - oh no it sounds bad as I write it - but in the opposite corner of where I found the phone, so maybe a hedgehog, but not a phone carrying one.

We kept finding random items in our back garden last year, a trainer, a trowel, several items of clothing, a child's garden toy, amongst others. This happened over the course of several months. Was getting increasingly freaked out, but when we had CCTV installed (for another reason), we discovered 5hat it was a fox.

I'd put money on it being a fox or other animal that dropped it, especially if you're rural.

Sorry to say it does definitely sound quite sinister. I don't blame you for being scared, I'd be unsettled too!

Hopefully the dog barking and your quick response has put any people/hedgehogs from coming back

Probably an oppertunist. We used to get them all the time where I lived. Over 2 years 4 times someone tried our door to see if it was open and they weren't

@TimeForChange123 Well. I was getting concerned as the evening was beginning, wondering what that night was going to bring.
I just posted, I didn't really thought through the tittle of the thread, or consider how it could attract criticism hours later...but I you're right, It's a bad tittle, especially with the dumb spelling mistake. Anyway, I expect you have other threads to shoot down, or is it just mine?
Or tell me what is it, that really gets your goat here?

The police have nothing to do at the moment, full stop

What absolute bullshit. The Police are as busy just now as they ever are

God I feel I've entered a parallel universe reading this thread what a lot of nonsense over a dropped phone. Cant believe how many people are adding to the OPs hysteria

@JacobReesMogadishu - It sounds wild! What an awful mess, they don't have the best brains these pig rustlers.

@SamsMumsCateracts - Another example of foxes making mischief then - they do sound bothersome.

@RealLifeHotWaterBottle It does a bit doesn't it? That dog was flexing, a peculiar thing, really noticeable. I looked towards the corner he was barking. at but couldn't see anything.

@Kinneddar on the phone the non-emergency services said the Police were really busy and might not get back to us soon.

Also, thanks for your kind words.
It's not just a dropped phone, is it?
Do you think the Police's response was over the top too?

It's quite strange how some people believe that having security concerns after a weird occurrence like this is overreaction, they must have very sheltered lives..
Do you think that people who say they have experienced trespassing, burglaries or whatever are generally telling a lie? That these things are myths, nothing bad ever happens in real life?

Sorry this is what I understand - So there IS a chip in the phone that gives off a signal, wether the phone is dead or not and this information is not available to us averagers, right?

No. There's no such chip. Phones do nothing when they're out of battery.

I can give you that absolutely 100% for iPhones, there may be some oddities out in the Android/other world.

When a phone is out of charge it is no longer updating GPS (which takes loads of battery to do anyway), it's no longer connected to or registered with cellular towers (so it couldn't communicate it's position anyway), and definitely not wifi (which it would need to be logged into, which takes yet more battery).

No battery really does mean a dead phone.

The only thing left behind is the location of when it was last connected to a cellular mast, or last logged its position with the Apple servers. If the dead phone is moved, those will not be updated.

Once the phone is charged, it'll automatically re-register with its local cell towers, log its position with Apple, log into local wifi if it has the password, all that. But when it's dead, it's dead.

But a hedgehog wouldn’t have an iphone..

It will if @AvalancheKit has anything to do with it

I lost my iPhone a few weeks ago. It was completely out of charge. Life 360 app found it. But I reckon as a PP has said, it was where I had dropped it and so was 'pinged' from its last live signal. Had someone found it and picked it up it would have been gone.

Astonishing how shitty people can be on here. I'm glad the police were more sympathetic than some of these replies.

@SpoonBlender thank you for re explaining!

OP I hope you can get some resolution...I'd be scared too.

I want to hear where the armpit of France is. Please.