Crashed hard drives, cracked LCD screens, virus-infested servers – technology has been part of many sad stories, which makes the following pair of happy endings all the more welcome.
Thanks to microchipping technology, a dog in Sydney, Australia was reunited with her owners recently after running away more than nine years ago from a home more than 1,500 kilometres away.
According to news reports, the dog, Muffy, was found sleeping on a piece of cardboard in a backyard in Melbourne after an anonymous call to the RSPCA.
After an examination, the dog was found to have been microchipped, a process that injects an I.D. chip under the skin and into the connective tissue of pets with an instrument much like a hypodermic needle.
Muffy was believed to have been at the Melbourne house for about one year after being found as a stray. Her whereabouts the intervening eight years remains a mystery. A pool hall? Fire hydrant convention?
No one knows.
In the end, Muffy was flown home to Brisbane and reunited with her owners, who were apparently delighted. Muffy, for her part, smiled the whole time.
Its emotional payload may pale in comparison to the aforementioned pet reunion, but a recent cell phone reunion in Taiwan was no less astonishing.
According to news reports, the device was lost while its owner was snorkelling, then floated at sea for four days and finally washed up on a beach in perfect condition after drifting for 37 kilometres. It was discovered by a lifeguard, who used the phone’s address book to track down its shocked owner.
Coincidentally, the lifeguard’s name is also rumoured to be “Muffy.”
Apparently, a water-resistant case had protected the phone at sea. The lifeguard – aka Muffy – even went so far as to recharge the battery.
Typos not good for GPS
Alas, all good things must come to an end, as do our high-tech happy endings. The next true tale, however, is not so much sad as it is ridiculous.
According to news reports, two vacationing Swedes expecting the golden beaches of the Italian island of Capri got a shock recently when tourist officials told them they were 650 kilometres off course in the northern town of Carpi, after mistyping the name in their GPS device.
The unidentified middle-aged couple (could one of them be another “Muffy”?) only discovered their error when they asked staff in the local tourist office how to drive to the island’s famous “Blue Grotto.”
The picturesque island of Capri, famed as a romantic holiday destination, lies in the Gulf of Naples in southern Italy and has been a resort since Roman times.
Carpi is a busy industrial town in the northern province of Emilia Romagna. Rumour has it that Carpi’s “Blue Grotto” is actually a gentleman’s club.
