Message in a Bottle

Dear Found Magazine, First, I’d like to take the opportunity to thank you for the permanent crook that I now have in my neck from scouring the landscape. We live on the beach; all kinds of things wash up. This note was found this morning by my husband while he and Stella the dog were out for a stroll. We were really fired up because in all the years we’ve lived here, we hadn’t found a note in a bottle until this one. So, then came the problem of how to get the note out intact. The tweezers were too short, as were needle nosed pliers, and we had no hemostats. The neighbor, who is a leftover from Berkley 1968, surely has some, but his shades were down and I just could not wait for him to get up, so I put the bottle in a plastic bag and nailed it with a hammer. It was a little deflating because I was hoping for a note from someone across the Atlantic, but it was still pretty funny.