Chinchilla Lost and Found

October 21st, 2009, 1 Comment »

For no reason in particular, lately I’ve been mentioning lost animal posters. The other day I saw a poster for a lost chinchilla named Finn. Is the name important? Do chinchillas come when they’re called?

In any case, I’d assumed that poor Finn was probably caught and consumed by a dog, coyote or particularly large cat. However, it turns out that he survived:

Chinchilla Poster

I appreciate that the owner went around and actually marked up all the posters with the good news. I always wonder what the success rate is on lost pets. It’s a little weird that the owner wrote the follow-up note in the first person, isn’t it? But, then, I gather chinchillas are excellent jumpers.

By the way, this is the best photo I’ve seen in Wikipedia for a while.

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What To Do If You Find a Camera?

November 28th, 2008, 5 Comments »

A reader named Miranda (who, sadly, recently lost her camera on a trip) sent along a link to the terrific blog Found Cameras and Orphaned Photos. The concept, as you might imagine, is pretty simple: people who find cameras or memory cards email photos to the blog, and the photos get posted. If you’ve lost your camera (or if you recognize anybody in the photos), you can contact the finder through the blog to get your photos back.

I might have done the implementation differently (enabling people to search a database by location, date lost, etc), but it’s a good start. The site will become more invaluable once photo-matching and recognition technology becomes more available.

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