March 29th, 2009 by Brad Lovell

This is a very interesting story. I received a phone call from Michelle on Friday night. Michelle had lost one of her beautiful white gold/diamond ear rings, which was a gift from her Fiancee. While Michelle had been talking on the phone, her big Labrador puppy was licking her ear, which caused the back of the ear ring to fall off. Michelle was unaware this had happened at the time…and went outside to do some gardening. Just as she lowered her head underneath the branch of a tree, she felt the earring drop from her ear. It then became clear to Michelle that her dog must have removed the backing, causing it to drop off. After inspecting some doggy poop, Michelle found the backing of the ear ring. So now all she needed to do was find the diamond side of the ear ring. After many unsuccessful attempts at finding the ear ring in the thick buffalo grass, Michelle decided to give me a call. I mentioned to Michelle that some times Metal Detectors are unable to detect small stud earrings. This has happened to me in the past. But because Michelle had her other ear ring, we could test it out. I brought both my metal detectors along just in case. As is turned out, the studs we’re too small for the metal detectors to recognise. Also, there we’re over hanging power lines where the earring had dropped which wasn’t helping the situation. I remembered a conversation I have had with my good friend Chris Turner from Vancouver. He mentioned a similar problem…his metal detectors we’re unable to pickup a signal on a small stud ear ring, so he ended up getting down on his hands and knees, and scraped the surface area with a screw driver. After scraping the area, he heard the ping of metal against metal…and that was how he found the ear ring. I decided to test this method…but unfortunately due to the thickness of the buffalo grass, this method did not seem to work. Since I had already driven out to Bexley (south of Sydney), I mentioned to Michelle I would search through the grass for a while just using my eyes and hands. About 10 minutes of searching the grass…I spotted the stud end of Michelle’s earring. I pulled it out from the grass roots, and there it was…that shining Diamond. I handed the diamond stud to Michelle, who was now a very VERY happy lady. After many hugs and kisses, Michelle handed me a generous reward. Lady luck was on my side for this job