things found in the 'hood (#1)

While at a friend's house this afternoon borrowing his mower, and taking a few minutes while there to poke/look up and down on the ground along his fencerow as it disappears into the overgrowth of a former alley. (there and the vacant lots to each side of his house would probably be fun places to metal-detect, ifn's I had one of those things...?)

I hope y'all don't have firsthand knowledge of what this thing is, if indeed any knowledge at all. Down here in southern US climates, it is commonplace for electrical service panels/breaker boxes to be located on an *outside* wall of many homes. (since many homes do not have usable basements that is, where the natural order of things generally suggests they should be located, but whatever...I came here from up there and have always found the practice rather strange) THUS, the 'main breaker' for any odd home is likewise usually hanging off the back of the house in its box someplace, with or without the rest of the sub circuit breakers.

And if you don't pay your bill, as power companies can tend to do, they'll *cut your power off*. With the breaker panels being exterior mounted it is quite easy for them to do so...they send a guy out who stops, opens the panel, flips the main breaker off, re-closes it, then *LOCKS IT CLOSED* with one of these little gizmos... <groan>

Nowadays they do it with even less effort (via remote control of our so-called "smart meters" we didn't have a choice but to accept as an 'upgrade' <grrr>) and even before that these little locking clamps weren't nearly foolproof, as this one is evidence of. I don't believe it is 'bent up' any, but the small wire bit still attached to it is the remains of a plastic one-way 'security seal' that would have been put on the clamp after it was installed, so they'd know if anybody messed with it in the meanwhiles. Somebody obviously messed with this one, prying it off whatever it was put onto and tossing it away to wait in the underbrush for me to discover... ;-) :-)