AWOL Teddy

I’m reporting from CSI Foyle this week where I’ve had to file an APB for our beloved Teddy who has been mysteriously missing since Monday last.
I had thought about calling the police, after reading of an Australian girl who had a crack team of cops hunting for the teddy she lost at a railway station in Melbourne. But then I thought that me having to spend the night in Strand Road barracks on a charge of wasting police time might only serve to add to the obvious trauma my 4-year-old was already facing.
Teddy is a standard issue brown ted with one eye missing, floppy limbs and a scraggy disposition. He was last seen on the roof of our car outside granny’s house – the husband thinks he put him there while he belted the boys in. When the car arrived at our house, rather surprisingly, Teddy had apparently not survived the journey and disappeared.
This left us with a distance of around four miles to cover in our bear hunt – not the easiest of tasks to complete at bedtime with a car full of inconsolable children on a cold, dark, rainy night.
After a restless night where Caolan woke every 15 minutes shouting ‘TEDDY!!!’ in what I felt was an overly dramatic fashion we checked all the usual places Teddy has been found previously – next door neighbour’s trees, the roof of the house, the bin, under the muck heap in the garden, the fridge, the dog’s kennel, under the wheels of the car – but he was nowhere to be seen. We even checked the dog’s teeth for telltale bits of fluff and chewed fur.
Granny put the neighbours on level seven alert, describing teddy to one as, and I quote, “this old moth-eating looking thing with only one eye,” as Caolan sobbed beside her reeling in shock at her blatant disrespect.
As we contemplated fashioning some missing posters I recalled a story I read a few years back about a young couple, their little boy and a teddy who was thrown over the side of a safety rail on a steep embankment during a tantrum.
The mum climbed over the safety rail to rescue said Ted and tumbled down a steep 300ft hillside. The da, seeing the missus unconscious at the bottom of the decline, also climbed over the rail, slid down in the same fashion and knocked himself out. A passer-by had to call the emergency services who airlifted the crazy injured parents to hospital, saved the teddy bear and took the little boy to safety.
It’s amazing the lengths parents will go to to save their kid’s furry friends.
If anyone has seen teddy let me know.