If you're game, dinner is on me.

We have local council pick up about 4 times a year.  This means loads of freebies for all.  Council pick up time is when an allocated suburb can dump their household and garden rubbish on their front verge and a big council truck eventually hauls it away.  The council prefers you don't place any rubbish about 2 weeks before the actual pick up time, so that gives everybody else a chance to grab 'treasures' from the rubbish piles.  What makes my mind boggle is the fact that people throw away some very good things.  What would it cost to pass it onto good will or physically take it to an op shop?  Why not try to recycle it in some why?  And most importantly, why not just pass it onto a family member or a friend that could use and appreciate it?  I've never understood how people can throw away things like this:

 

What is it, a ceramic cassarole dish?  I guess that's what I'd use it for.  Not a chip, not a crack and 99.9% scratch-free.

The story... 
A few months back I was driving my niece to my house and from the corner of my eye, I actually saw it under some other junk.  I couldn't see a lot of it in that split second but I could see that it was white and the sun was shining on it.  I was amazed that my niece didn't see it first, because she was the passenger!  I slammed on the brakes and the car behind me wasn't too impressed... then parked in somebody's driveway.  Ran to it, picked it up and like a mad woman who just found a pot of gold, ran back to the car and handed it to my niece to hold.  She and I couldn't believe our eyes.  I was affectionately dubbed 'hawk eye' for the rest of the day. 

Got home, cleaned it with bleach and it looked like a thing of beauty on my kitchen counter.  But not before finding this inside!!

What is it, a gekko? Probably not.  It wasn't longer than my index finger, but I screamed loud enough for my husband to come running.  He thought it was the cutest thing.  He let it go in the garden and I was glad to see the last of him or her.

Yay for freebies!