Hat tip to Sarisky. Originally posted February 28, 2009 on the FreeRepublic.com bloggers website. Written by Sarisky and posted with no copywriter restrictions. Fee to copy and reuse.

Listen up people, there's lots of deep water and mountainous cliffs out there, so let's all be careful out there. Think of this as a warning as to all the places that people could inadvertently lose those long and short metal objects.

Worn holsters, carrying cases with faulty latches, backpacks full of holes. Not to mention tripping over roots and rocks, slippery hands and just general clumsiness.

Sometime people lose everything in a small forest fire or an overturned canoe. Sometimes things are lost to inaccessible places like off steep cliffs or dark ravines. Occasionally it's an innocent trip near a deep still lake in the mountains, and the last thing you see is that shiny metal splashing into the murky green water. There are those rare times were one might carry along their hardware to more exotic places. Geysers and hot springs, volcanoes and old mine shafts.

One can imagine an almost magnetic pull on the metal into the bottomless reaches of a unexplored cave or unfathomable sinkhole. Even quicksand and gravel pits out yonder in remote places can swallow up even long pieces, that no matter how long and hard your search, the cold darkness forces you to retreat back to civilization. And who can remember where something small enough to fit into the of palm of your hand was lost, upon returning for another search, weeks or months later?

All of this could mean that you have your hardware one minute and it's GONE FOREVER The next.

These are probably the top 50 + ways one could Lose all or some of their hardware(In No real order of importance):

1. Dropped off a cliff, Biff

2. Fell in a lake, Jake

3. Thrown at a bear, Clare

4. Buried in sand, Jan

5. Missing in mud,Jud

6. Fell down a crack, Jack

7. Lost the parts, Bart

8. Fell in a hole, Joel

9. Jogging Jostle, Justine

10. Lost in the tall grass, Cass

11. Deep in snow, Joe

12. Thrown out in the trash, Nash

13. Tripped into a well, Mel

14. Forgot in the can, Stan

15. Whitewater wipe out, Walt

16. Lost in cave, Dave

17. Left on top of the truck, Chuck

18. Holster fail, Dale

19. Hole in pocket, Crockett

20. Mountain hike, Spike

21. Buried in crete, Pete

22. Lost in a stable, Mable

23. Deep water splash, Nash

24. Stolen by thug, Doug

25. Misplaced moving crate, Nate

26. Quicksand, man

27. Spelunking mud, Bud

28. Lost at camp, Champ

29. Fell in some dirt, Burt

30. Deep ravine, Jean

31. Buried at sea, Bea

32. Deep water mishap, Chap

33. Overturned canoe, Drew

34. Garage sale last fall, Paul

35. Flipped over boat, that's all she wrote.

36. Storage shed fire, sire

37. Ice too thin, it fell in

38. Missing in a messy home, Jerome

39. Outhouse mishap, Oh Cr.....

40. Stolen from a shed, Ned

41. Sulfur springs are hot and corrosive, Joseph

42. Avalanche,Blanch

43. Lave flow, Joe

44. klutzy man, Stan

45. Deep abyss, Chris

46. Sinkhole slip, Trip

47. Metal don't float, Choate

48. Fell off a Jetty, Betty

49. Inadvertent misplace, Ace

50. Dropped on a high bridge, Midge

51. Rock climbing loss, Hoss

(Dis)Honorable mention:

Reached over on a boat, out it splashed from my coat.

Tripped on a root and it slid down a slope, tried to find it but have no hope

Took a tumble on glacier, now it's part of mother nature