Can't think of where else to put this, so...

[.308 Norma]

Once I have reached the point where I am convinced that what I am looking for must never have existed in the first place I call my wife. For some uncanny reason she almost always finds it rather quickly. Drives me nuts.

I'm the same way. That is, I call my wife when I've dropped something I can't find, or whenever there's something "hidden" from me in the refrigerator.
However, I became convinced a long, long time ago that there's a very good explanation as to why my wife can find things I've dropped or find things in the refrigerator that I can't. You see, I'm nearly 5'11" tall, while my wife is only 5'1". That means my wife's eyes are closer to the floor than my eyes are. And as far as finding things in the refrigerator goes - it's a plot! The refrigerator companies purposely build refrigerators with shelves so low that average height males can't find the treats their short wives hid in the back.

 

[doubleh]

I don't know if they are ghosts, grimlins, or golems but my shop seems infested with them. No matter how much I fuss and cuss they just keep what they have run off with. However they seem to be afraid of my wife and usually return things when I call on her for help. They seldom take anything in the house and usually leave it where it is easily found if they do, most likely due to her being in the house. We did have a brave one not long ago that took our firestick and kept it until after the replacement arrived. It put it under the recliner that we had looked under three times.

 

[Bill_in_TR]

I don't know if they are ghosts, grimlins, or golems but my shop seems infested with them. No matter how much I fuss and cuss they just keep what they have run off with. However they seem to be afraid of my wife and usually return things when I call on her for help. They seldom take anything in the house and usually leave it where it is easily found if they do, most likely due to her being in the house. We did have a brave one not long ago that took our firestick and kept it until after the replacement arrived. It put it under the recliner that we had looked under three times.

The fourth time is the charm.

 

[shoebox1.1]

I work on cars for a living and a bolt might fall under the hood. You didn’t hear it hit the ground… it HAS to be here somewhere. I give up after 20 mins and just replace it. Might be in customers garage floor later someday but you gotta cut your losses of time

 

[WestKentucky]

I have 3 hooties. Ages are 13, 11, and 3-1/2, all female. Things disappear and then reappear in their rooms. Especially small screwdrivers and tape measures, but anything is liable to vanish, and nobody ever did it.

 

[BLACKHAWKNJ]

When I work on my firearms I have a generous supply of magnets. I also wear safety glasses, they do a good job in catching springs, spring loaded parts.

 

[Pat Riot]

My hootie is usually called dammit or sumbitch I think especially when it comes to firearms related stuff if your not mysteriously loosing small bits from time to time your not as involved with your firearms as you should be. But never fails soon as new parts are ordered the lost item magically turns up right where you searched and cussed.

That happens to me almost every time. Buy a part, the one you lost reappears.
This had always been the way it was until I moved into the last house I had when I lived in SoCal for 3 years.
I was always losing something there in that garage. I had a work bench and a reloading bench in the garage.
I was assembling an AR. In one day I lost a pivot pin spring, a pivot pin detent, and a take down pin spring. I looked everywhere. Couldn’t find them.
I went to my favorite gun store and bought an “Oops Kit”. A little pack of most often lost or damaged AR parts. When I got home I decided to hold off until later in the week as I had other things to do.
The next Saturday I decided to finish the AR I was working on. I couldn’t find the dang Oops Kit. I looked everywhere. I was pretty perturbed. Back to the LGS I went. They didn’t have the Oops Kit I bought the week before, but they had one at twice the price that had a few other items in it, like; a spare firing pin, BCG cotter pin, and more pins and springs.
I get back home and finish assembling the gun. The next day I found the original Oops Kit laying on a shelf in a cabinet I hadn’t opened in weeks.
It seemed like everything I worked on in that garage ended up with missing parts that had to be purchased a second time. Weird!
When I moved I was getting some things out of the rafters and lying on a piece of plywood up their were the three parts that took flight from that first AR I put together 2 1/2 years earlier.

 

[bigpower491]

Don't even get me started on the strange things that have happened out here since the missus passed.....I reckon somewhere out there she's laughing her hinnie off when she pulls those fast ones on me. Things always turn up in places they should never be with no idea how they got there or why I would even have it there.

 

[PapaG]

Mine has stolen at least two 1911 recoil spring plugs.

 

[Yamifrk]

So not really sure if it was a Hootie…
I bought a 45acp conversion kit for my Dillon 750, I had some bullets and a few other things stacked up with the conversion box sitting on top and being a man that doesn’t want to make multiple trips. I picked everything up to bring to the reloading room. I made 1 step and and it slid off and hit the floor breaking the box open and scattering everything everywhere in the dining room. I found everything but 1 locator pin. I looked, my wife looked, the 3 cats were helping we couldn’t find it. Fast forward 2 weeks, I set everything up to load 45, used my extra pin from the spares kit. Dumped the powder hopper full of HP-38 and started dropping charges…no powder coming out of the powder measure. Yep you guessed it that pin somehow ended up inside the powder funnel. What are those odds???

 

[ontarget]

First time I fired my LCP I thought someone was messing with me.
Fired 2 mags, and found zero pieces of brass. Searched everywhere. Turns out that I was standing close enough to the garage that all of that brass flew on the roof and rolled into the gutter except 1 piece that I happened to spy several days later still on the roof.
I still chuckle a bit every time I remember that.
Also, I'm very OCD about policing my brass at my backyard range, but somehow always come up short on 32 ACP empties. Never a problem with anything else though.

 

[nettlle]

I was working on a tiller one day and dropped a part down into the crankcase oil fill hole. I spent an hour, shaking the tiller upside down, using magnets, and picks trying to fish the part out while working inside the garage. I though to myself, you know what?, if I was working on this while working over long grass the part would fall out and I wouldn't be able to find it. Sure enough I carried it outside, turned it upside down over long grass, and with one shake it fell out. It took me a little while to find it. Sometimes you can make evil work for you.

 

[CajunBass]

This is my story of our HOOTIE. We lived in an 1882 farm house. Many strange things happened while living there, but the most memorable was wife and I sitting on the couch and heard footsteps in the upstairs rooms. All the floorboards creaked when walking around upstairs so we assumed it was our two kids. Then we see both of them at the dining room table doing their homework. We all looked at each other and continued what we were doing as this was not an unusual occurrence there.

My wife and I used to live in an old apartment building. We would hear furniture being moved around upstairs at all hours of the night. I finally went upstairs one day to see who lived there. Turned out, no one did, and hadn't for a long time.

Don't even get me started on the strange things that have happened out here since the missus passed.....I reckon somewhere out there she's laughing her hinnie off when she pulls those fast ones on me. Things always turn up in places they should never be with no idea how they got there or why I would even have it there.

I'm sorry for your loss. I believe I would find that comforting.

 

[speedingpickle]

I call mine the sock gremlin, but he'll take anything that isn't nailed down, especially my keys when I'm in a hurry. 10 pairs go in the dryer, 9 1/2 come out. I should buy stock in Hanes.

 

[TarDevil]

"Hootie." This name is new name to me. It shall now be the attribute for the "man in the attic" described to all those seeking free beach housing during the holiday season. He shall also be the culprit casting unaccountable pills on our bathroom floor.

I've yet to lose anything firearm related, but is now my ace in the sleeve for such.

 

[tightgroup tiger]

Mine is called the dryer, It eats anything that gets near it. I need to pull it out of there and get all my .357mag cases back I'm missing. They have to be under there. It likes to eat bullets to.

 

[TarDevil]

Mine is called the dryer, It eats anything that gets near it. I need to pull it out of there and get all my .357mag cases back I'm missing. They have to be under there. It likes to eat bullets to.

They're gone, I regret to say. Joined all the other single socks and miscellaneous items in the rings around Saturn.

 

[CajunBass]

I work on cars for a living and a bolt might fall under the hood. You didn’t hear it hit the ground… it HAS to be here somewhere. I give up after 20 mins and just replace it. Might be in customers garage floor later someday but you gotta cut your losses of time

Then the customer wonders..."Where did this bolt come from?"

 

[Bill_in_TR]

So that's where all the nuts and bolts that show up under my vehicles come from. I will have to chat with my mechanic who is also my neighbor.

 

[CraigC]

I hate to lose brass and I hate having to sift through the weeds for brass. It's why I don't reload for most autojammers and catch my levergun brass before it hits the ground.

Mine looks like this and follows me everywhere I go. He loves to eat screws and tiny springs.

 

[Rexster]

My maternal grandfather would occasionally mention having a “haint.” Being a devout Southern Baptist, he never openly acted superstitious, but a “haint” seemed to be something outside the house, rather than indoors, if I remember correctly. My young ears reckoned that it was an old Southern US way of saying “haunt,” and, I later looked that up, to confirm that was the case. I had thought it might have been a Scottish form of “haunt,” because I do have much Lowland and some Highland Scot ancestty, but the sources indicated it is a coastal Carolina form, derived from the Gullah dialect, from which a which a number of Southern expressions originated.

 

[doubleh]

One thing is for certain. You always find lost things in the last place you look. Sometimes you turn up other lost things during your search which is a plus.

 

[doubleh]

I hate to lose brass and I hate having to sift through the weeds for brass. It's why I don't reload for most autojammers and catch my levergun brass before it hits the ground.

Mine looks like this and follows me everywhere I go. He loves to eat screws and tiny springs.

I believe the Texas variety has at least twice that many teeth.

 

[CraigC]

I believe the Texas variety has at least twice that many teeth.

Everything's bigger!

 

[doubleh]

Everything's bigger!

Yes, and especially the sandstorms. I can remember in the drouth of the '50's when the bus driver had several of us watching for the tops of high line poles as the road was seldom seen. A very slow ride home and then you had to get off the bus and out into it to make your way to your house. It was about 100 yards for me to get inside and time enough to get covered in dirt. We don't have to deal with that here except for the rollers coming on a front from the northeast. The red dirt is usually gone within an hour or so and then it's just the wind.