An Oklahoma farmer is celebrating the return of a cell phone lost in October and found nine months later in Japan after it took a trip in a grain shipment down the Mississippi River, through the Panama Canal and across the Pacific Ocean.
Kevin Whitney of Chickasha said he lost his smart phone when he bent down and the device fell out of his pocket into grain that was heading to a grain elevator.
"I thought I'll never see that phone again," he told Oklahoma City TV broadcaster KFOR.
The phone was found by mill workers in Kashima, Ibaraki Prefecturte, in a shipment of about 2 million bushels of sorghum. They sent the phone back to a company in Louisiana that shipped the grain, which then tracked it down to its owner.
"It's crazy. I can't believe it," Whitney told KFOR, adding he was able to retrieve digital images he never thought he would see again.
"What really shocked me about it all was what a small world it is. There are a lot of meaningful pictures on it, so we are real glad to get the phone back."