The Wild Goose Chase!
One night shift my partner and I were tasked to search for a missing person who had phoned the police on her cell phone stating she was in trouble. She claimed to have been bashed and stabbed and was in a bad way, but couldn't tell us where she was. We had a general idea of the area to search from a satellite track on the cell phone she used to call the police. We drove around for a while and then went on foot.
Eagle (the police helicopter) was flying around with its heat sensor turned on, and it picked up a heat signal on their sensor which wasn't too far away from us. Unfortunately for us it meant we had to walk through scrub bush, across a stream and through a muddy swamp. We were wet and covered in mud as we neared the area where we thought this missing person might have been.
We called out without any reply as Eagle kept saying â∠ÂYou're nearly thereââ¬ÃÂ. We got to a small area of bush and Eagle said â∠Âright there guysââ¬ÃÂ.
We cautiously cleared the bush to find out if the person was in there when all of a sudden we heard an unusual noise. A bird reared its long neck towards us as we shone our torch near it.
We got such a fright - being night time and expecting to find the worst. It turned out to be a goose nesting its chicks! We could hear another nearby unit cracking jokes about us over the radio when moments later they called up to say that they had got their patrol car stuck in the mud! â∠ÂRight back at youââˆwe thought!
As we returned to the station to change our muddy uniforms, we heard the missing person had been located at her home address and had made the whole story up. She got a free ride to the cells for wasting police time.