Moose Droppings

Finding Michael

Mar 20, 2007 @ 10:35 pm by Moose

As the days went on the possibility for a happy ending seemed to be slipping by and with the threat of rain tonight the search today was taking on a new urgency. Additional searchers joined this morning with the news that the night time operations had not yielded any additional clues.
A new arriving team from South Carolina was the team to discover Michael walking on a trail about a mile north of the campsite. Gandalf the search dog was the first to react to the close proximity of Michael to the search team when he caught Michael’s scent. He alert his handler and they followed Gandalf till they spotted Michael walking on the trail on the other side of the stream. At first Michael didn’t react to the searches and the searchers were a bit surprised that they had found Michael. Michael asked them for some water.
The second search team made up of Guilford County Sheriff Deputies and K9’s arrived and one of them was a paramedic and he began assessing Michael’s condition. Back at the command post and staging area cheers went up when the radio call came in that Michael had been found and he was in A1 condition.

As the days go on I’m sure we’ll learn more about what happened and how Michael became lost. His father has reported that Michael was homesick and he left the campsite in order to hitchhike home. Michael also has some form of Attention Deficit Disorder that undoubtedly played a role in what transpired. Another interesting thing is how his boy scout training and his fascination with a book, “Hatched”, about a boy lost in the Canadian Wilderness after a plane crash, impacted his decision making while lost. It would appear that Michael spent his days wandering and seeking shelter under rock outcrops at night. Michael had heard search helicopters and searchers but they did not hear him when he called out to them. Had Michael followed one important rule and stayed put when he got lost he may have gotten out a bit sooner. We are glad it’s a happy ending for all involved and a tip of the hat to all those who volunteered to search.