Kevin Butler did not know what it contained when he tossed a napkin into the trash bag, which he later left at a transfer station to be taken away by a trash trailer headed for the dumping ground. It turned out his wife had cleaned their wedding rings and left them to dry, wrapped in the napkin. The New Hampshire couple in the United States was lucky. The trash transfer staff were able to eventually find the wedding rings several hours later.
News agency Associated Press reported how the trash transfer staff found the jewellery amid the piles of garbage in a 20-tonne trash trailer, after Kevin asked the transfer station in Windham for help.
All this happened on November 23 when Kevin, while clearing out trash from his house, accidentally threw away the rings wrapped in the napkin. He left the trash at the transfer station but went back there after realising his mistake.
“He said, ‘I’m pretty sure I threw the rings out,’” the AP report quoted Dennis Senibaldi, the transfer station supervisor, as saying.
Senibaldi and his team reviewed surveillance video from the station to see what time Kevin first turned up there and where exactly he threw the trash. Using an excavator, they started to scoop up trash from the trailer, the report said.
The crew spotted a white bag soon, and knew they were close. What helped the staff find the rings from the garbage was apparently the sighting of a celery stalk.
“One of the things he (Kevin) said was (inside the bag) was celery stalks, and I could see a celery stalk sticking out the side of the bag,” Senibaldi said.
Though there was no sign of the rings in the beginning, they struck it lucky soon.
So, there was a napkin at the very bottom, “underneath some carrot or sweet potato peelings”, Senibaldi was quoted as saying, adding: “Literally, I opened up the napkin, there were the two rings.”
“I wouldn’t recommend doing that,” Butler told WMUR-TV about rummaging through the trash, according to the AP report. But, he added, “to get the rings back, I would do it a thousand times over”.