Vise grips past imperfect and future-to-present feeling tense

SUMMARY: Finding what was lost, but perhaps a little late.

I put vise grips on rawhides and bully sticks and other larger chews to keep dogs from choking on the last pieces. (Read https://dogblog.finchester.org/2020/12/vise-grip-vices.html .)

Tika always used to take hers out to the lawn next to the deck, and a couple of times I couldn't find the grips afterwards. And then I never did find all of them.

Because the grips sometimes go walkabout for a little while anyway-- I had more than just a couple.

I started out with 7 [vise grips] that I bought specifically for this. I'm now down to 2 functional, another very rusty that I finally found in the grass... and who knows where the others ended up. 

[From FB Dec 13, 2015, 4:23 PM: The mystery object--any idea?

With Ellen C's Knee for scale. We (mostly she) had been digging by hand.

Here's the story: I thought that Luke likely buried a vise grip that held a large rawhide. Haven't found it by poking around. (He had it in the living room, then went outside, then back in, etc a few times, then he suddenly no longer had it.)  

Thus it came that I invited Ellen Clary to bring her metal detector and help me look for it. For some reason she thought that would be a great idea. So there we were, scanning the yard (found a nail! And a teensy round washer!) and discovering that there's metal EVERYWHERE (sprinkler heads, dogwalks, fencing, pipes, etc.) in the areas that I think are likely burying areas.  

So she scanned around in the center of the yard (which has been greatly enhanced by additional canine development work). Got a strong beep. Dug down a little. The beep changed location a little. Dug off the the side a little. Beep changed location. Dug off to the side a little. 

I joked that, the way it was going, we'd have a hole 5 feet across and 3 feet deep in the middle of my once and future lawn.

Anyway--with Ellen doing almost all the digging while I yelled encouragement such as "I see another dog poop over in the corner; going to go scoop that up," we ended up with a hole verging on 5 feet across and 3 feet deep. Well, perhaps 3 feet across and a foot deep.  

And we found the edge of a Thing, and the ground around/under it fell away in places as if there had been empty space, or something else around it that had decayed away. Seemed to be chunks of rocks and concrete under and around it. Metal, rusting, large circular--

It's hard clay, so not the easiest stuff to dig, and I truly didn't WANT a hole 5 feet wide in my yard at this time, so we closed it up and left it as an exercise for a warmer and sunnier day.

We speculated that it might be a very large metal pail or basin or firepit (although didn't see signs of ashes as far as we went) and not sure how deep it is or otherwise shaped, since we just have the edge. Anyone have any ideas? (This land was farmland before the house was built in 1970, but the house's previous, original owner had done quite a bit of digging and installing stuff, also.)

While we were at it, I also took the detector and used it around the lawn areas where Tika used to lie, looking for grips that she might have lost in the lawn. Nuthin'. Anyway, never did find any vise grips that day.
]

[FB comments on my post of JtmeandnSuapnsrnonusyo re23l, dlu2gm01dc6  ·Ellen Levy Finch

Ellen Clary

 even came down with her metal detector to help me look, but we were thwarted by the fact that there is metal *everywhere* in my yard. So, yeh, someday maybe they'll reappear!

[UPDATE ON  Facebook,Jun 8, 2016, 9:16 PM -- 

Well, surprise, surprise! Found today: This was one of the the things I was hoping to find with Ellen Clary's metal detector, which she came to visit with. Except that this was about 5 feet beyond the area where I had expected Tika to have been lying, way back when, and therefore where I ran the detector.

Vise grip is at bottom of photo below crook of stick. 
For Tika's losses, I ran the metal detector from the vicinity of Chip and closer to the house.

I'd been looking for this for a long time. Suddenly it emerged, nestled among roots of grass.

I'm guessing that this one isn't salvageable even with a little WD-40.

UPDATE on FB Mar 26, 2020, 5:19 PM!
Hey,

Ellen Clary

: Found another one. In exactly the same place that the others have gradually been reappearing. It is so odd that we couldn’t find them with the metal detector. They might’ve been buried under grass roots at the time. And of course every time they come through with the blower week after week after week it’s blowing away some of the soil on top.

[FB: My response to a comment on my post asking what it was: Rusty old vise grips that Tika left on the lawn and I didn't pick up right away and then couldn't find.]