CSI: Fred.

The other day I was walking junior dog when we came across these phones, right in the middle of the street.

Both of them had seen better days. The screens were cracked like they'd been run over.

I took them back to examine them, see if I could find out to whom they belonged. The ZTE phone seemed to be a Blade Vantage, which you can get for fifty bucks with a Verizon deal, and the ANS phone a $25 special from Assurance Wireless.

The ANS was dead; no power at all, and I have no charger that could fit it. The ZTE still had some life, which I discovered to my surprise when it started to ring for tea time at 8:50:

I was able to turn on the phone, and navigate a little, but the broken screen kept maneuvering around on its own. After much fiddling I actually found out to whom the phone belonged, and he was actually listed in the white pages. I got an address. No phone number available -- and if there was, I might have just been calling this busted relic. So I decided that the phones had probably been lost or stolen together and I would send them both to the owner. I wanted to do it on the sly; I had no desire to get involved in a crime scene or a domestic squabble. Plus, I didn't have any choice; the owner lived in an apartment complex that has a strict no-trespassing rule. (Believe me, I got yelled at once just for walking my dog past there on Thanksgiving morning.)

I left the envelope with the broken phones on the big apartment mailbox, hoping someone would get it to the man before the rain started. Two hours later it was raining.

So it was lame, I know, but had either phone been intact I would have tried much harder to get them to the owners. I've done that before with a phone that I found. These were cheap and probably irreparable.

I still would like to know how they wound up in the middle of the street. I may have to write a mystery story to find out, because I'll probably never know.

📱📱📱📱📱

UPDATE: No, not about the phones. Sharp readers -- and aren't you all? -- will have noted that I posted twice yesterday. That's because this post was composed yesterday afternoon and saved, except I pressed Post instead of Save. So to salvage it as a post for today, here's the latest satirical brilliance from the clever chaps at IMAO, giving the Babylon Bee a run for its money:

UC Berkeley Bans Constitution as ‘Hate Speech’ Over ‘3/5 Person’ and ‘Indians not Taxed’