The Case of the Stolen Wallet, Keys, Sunglasses, and Phone
A tale of thievery on the golf course by a coatimundi
Photo by Aldrin Rachman Pradana
We live in the tropics during the winter on the Yucatan Peninsula along the Caribbean Sea. My husband, Marty, likes to keep active by playing tennis and golf each week, loving the workouts. I, on the other hand, sit a lot. Being a writer, I don’t find enough time for workouts, but I write about them sometimes.
Last Wednesday, while Marty was busy on the golf course, I was at home deeply involved in working on my newest book. But my concentration was broken when I was interrupted by a text on my phone. It was from Rose, one of our friends golfing with Marty.
The text said: “Hahaha. Marty just got robbed by a creature with a long tail! No worries; found the wallet in the jungle. Car keys dropped first gave a clue. Then phone then finally wallet…”
My reply: “OMG! I assume w/ the description of a tail attachment that it was a four-legged creature. Did you get a photo of the culprit? Or did it have two arms and a tail with just two legs? Un mono, perhaps?”
Rose: “It was an animal. Checked out our cart first. Paw prints everywhere on my phone. Only photos are in memory bank. Marty is still upset.”
‘And can’t play for shit now,’ was the sentence she’d left unsaid, I imagined. I continued texting…
Me: “I’m sure he’s upset, poor guy. Was everything in the wallet?”
I was still imagining a more human thief since an animal didn’t sound feasible to me to go after something not edible.
Rose: “Everything was in a baggie and stuff dropped out along the way to the jungle. All recovered.”
I thanked her for the information and continued with my writing, trying to concentrate, but kept imagining what kind of critter would take a baggy full of things that had nothing to do with food.
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I remembered, then, Marty telling me last year about an incident when they all had ordered hamburgers from the Club House to eat in between plays, but when he returned from putting, eager to eat his burger, it was gone. No sign of it, not even the paper it had been wrapped in. I wondered if there was a connection…a thief laying-in-wait.
Upon Marty’s return that day, after giving him a loving welcome from a safe distance because of his dripping clothes from spending so much time in the heat, I asked him, “So, what was your big adventure today?”
He said, “What do you mean?” not knowing that Rose had spilled the beans about his news.
“What happened with your wallet?” I inquired more precisely.
He asked, “How did you find out? You couldn’t have known unless Rose texted you.”
“Yeah, well, she did, and now I want to know what happened. Give me details, please.”
He began, “Do you remember last year when I told you about the incident with the disappearing hamburger?” I nodded. “That happened while I was on the same hole as this last incident. We were parked once again near the jungle at that place while we were putting. I thought it had been a coatimundi, although I didn’t see it.”
Photo by Soheb Zaidi
He then told me the tale about how the little shit must have unzipped the pocket on his golf bag that was firmly secured in its compartment on the golf cart, but the pockets were accessible.
“I had my eyeglasses, telephone, wallet, and car keys in a zip-lock plastic bag in the small front pouch of the golf bag all zipped up. I never would have realized anything was amiss until we were ready to leave the course and found I had no car keys. But when I saw sunglass laying on the cart path behind the cart when I went to put my putter away, I picked them up.
“At that time, I figured the glasses belonged to someone else, because I didn’t have sunglasses, only my regular transitional ones that were in the baggy that had been zipped up in my golf bag. And then I saw car keys laying on the ground nearby and thought, some poor sap lost his car keys and sunglasses. Bad luck.
“However, putting the two things together in my mind, and looking more closely at the car keys, it hit me that both the glasses and the keys were mine. I began to understand that my transitional glasses had turned dark while lying out in the sun, so I didn’t immediately recognize them.
“I was curious more than panicked upon seeing those items, but then my brain kicked in and I realized that they had come out of the baggie which had my phone and my wallet in it, also. That’s when panic set in.”
He paused and shuddered as he thought about the magnitude of those losses.
“I quickly checked the pocket in the golf bag those items had been in and realized not only was the zipper unzipped but the baggy I had kept the keys, glasses, phone, and wallet in was gone. There was nothing in that pocket that had been zipped up securely.
“I thought that because both my wallet and phone were still missing, it was likely a somebody, not something, stole my things, and that made me feel very ill.
“My golf cart partner, Scott, walked over to the jungle’s edge and exclaimed excitedly, ‘I found your phone!’ I felt a lot of relief about that, but what about my wallet? It was still unaccounted for, and that was the most important item.
“The location of the dropped phone gave me great concern that I may never see my wallet again, especially if it was a person who had taken the baggy of stuff. Even if the baggy with the wallet was dropped as unimportant by a four-legged creature, it could be under leaves or bushes, anywhere, and I may never know it. My stomach was rumbling.
“I walked in deeper through the greenery to search and was excited to see a small plastic bag. But I could tell that it wasn’t mine. I walked a bit further and saw another baggy not far away and hurried toward it. I thought it was the one I had brought and was hopeful, but I could see that my wallet was not in it.
“My stomach started seriously churning as my mind began a run-through of all that I was losing: my American driver’s license, my Mexican driver’s license, my credit cards, debit cards, plus all the other cards I carried, and my medical cards, not to mention the $3,000 pesos I had in cash. Fear took hold of me thinking about how much my life was likely to change for the next few months. I’d be unable to do anything until I got all those items replaced.
“I was getting shaky. I was prepared to walk further into the jungle to look around more thoroughly when I saw brown leather laying a little further up from the baggie. My wallet, I could see as I walked closer. I was overjoyed but felt trepidation and angst from knowing that I might find it empty.
Photo by Dean
“When I picked it up and saw that nothing was missing from it, I was so overwhelmed with relief I began to shake from the simple joy of that relief. It was a super moment.
“It was then when I knew it was likely not a two-legged creature who had robbed me, but a four-legged one who could not eat those items in the baggie and had cast them aside as having no value to it whatsoever. I was grateful for my insight but pissed off that a mere critter had put me through such agony.”
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“What do you think it was?” I queried, trying to visualize something like a coatimundi doing such a thing, not that I knew them well, having only glimpsed one from afar walking across the road with its big bushy tail. A raccoon, for sure, as we’d had run-ins with those nasty bastards a few times when we were camping in the past. I did know that raccoons were nocturnal creatures, whereas coatimundis were diurnal, but I didn’t know much else about those Mexican varieties of four-legged thieves.
“But it was the damnedest thing,” Marty continued, “that fear from seeing my life pass before me for the next few weeks, and the feeling of emptiness and the work that would be involved to recreate all that I’d have lost. It made me realize how much we depend on the contents of our wallets, how valuable they are to us, and what we need to do to protect them. But to find the wallet with all still intact…that, to me, was a miracle.”
“So, back to my question of what took everything?”
“I think it was a coatimundi, since I was certain it had been the one last year that had taken my burger, and we see them around occasionally. But what if it had been a person in the jungle waiting for unsuspecting souls like us to park close enough for him or her or them to sneak in and grab wallets or other valuables out of our bags or carts? I hate to think about that. It’s bad enough to have been duped by a smart four-legged, furry, long-tailed, and long-snouted motherfucker with long nails and sharp teeth, which I’m glad I didn’t have to fight in order to retrieve my goods, and would have done, had I seen the wallet in its grasp. And maybe I would have gotten the wallet back, but I’d have been pretty damaged in the process, I’m sure. They can be vicious critters, I’ve been told.” He stopped as he gave a shudder at those thoughts. “But I know that I’m going to be much more careful, even if I have to put a padlock on my zipper pocket. Or maybe I just won’t park so close to the damned jungle.”
He smiled at me and added, “When Scott and I drove on toward the next tee box we drove right by a family of those likely cart robbers, and they didn’t even move away as we approached. I could have sworn I saw smirks on their faces as we passed. And then when we got to the next tee box, I really screwed up my tee shot and continued to play badly. It was as if I had forgotten how to play the game.”
“Now that’s sad, although correctable, since it was from the stress you’d been feeling,” I consoled, and told him I was going to look up coatimundi for more info about them.
While on the internet I began to laugh. “Guess what?” I asked him, “It says that for sure the coatimundi and the raccoon are from the same family.”
“Humph! No surprise there,” Mac muttered. “They’re both equally nasty bastards and I’m gonna keep my eyes peeled for both when out and about near the jungle.”
Photo by Li Yan