Not the house or the road but the best I could find on the internet
I start to knock on the doors of the houses on my right, waking up the occupants as it is just after 8am on a Saturday morning. Bleary eyed, everyone looks at me as if I am out of my mind when I ask if they might have 'lost' a baby that I just found on the road and they all shake their heads no. I ask if they know who around here has a baby about a year and a half old and no one knows. After about 5 minutes of this I decide I need to get back to the babies and get home. Once there, I strip the boy of his diaper, pop him into the bath to get him warmed up, dress him in some of my son's clothing, and feed him breakfast. Then I call the police. Through all of this, my son stands at my side and just stares at the little boy, his normal baby-talk jabber gone completely silent.
When the policeman arrives, I tell him the details and when I am finished he looks up from his note pad with an espression of amazement and says "I can not believe that you stopped and brought him home and fed and clothed him." I looked back at him just as amazed and said, "I can not believe that I saw 8 or 9 people drive their cars around him and not stop." He shakes his head and says, "I guess so."
He takes the boy with the promise that he will call me to let me know when they find who he belongs to. As well as the clothes I have a full baby bottle, some baby cookies and a small toy to send along with them and the policeman says he will make sure I get the items back.
About two hours later, I get a call from him. An hour or so after he got back to the station, the frantic parents called to report their missing child. They live in the farmhouse that was down the road to the left of where I found him (that was a long way for a baby to walk!!). They want to thank me personally and to return to me the items I had sent with the baby. Later that afternoon, my husband, son and I drive over and pull into the farmhouse driveway. Right away, the father comes out and I can see the curtains move and I assume the mother is watching. She doesn't come out to meet us. However he thanks us profusely as he hands over the clothes etc. He says the back door latch is broken and the little boy has just learned how to get out of his crib and he had escaped while they slept. He says he is just sick about it and feels ashamed and embarrassed. I am about to try to assuage his guilt a little by saying 'well anything can happen once, as long as it doesn't happen twice' when he goes on to say that it had happened the week before but the child had only gotten as far as the back field. I try to hide my shock and dismay as I stammer out something about needing to get the lock fixed and he agrees saying that he had gone to the hardware store that afternoon and bought something to fix it.
As we drive away, we shake our heads at the absolute irresponsibility of the parents actions - or rather lack of action - and the very very happy outcome of the whole incident in light of all that could have happened to that baby in the time he was out of the house. And I offer up a prayer that the parents have learned a lesson and will take better care of that little life.
It's hard to believe he'd be in his early 30's today. I wonder who he is and where he lives. And I wonder if he ever heard the story of that cold day in April.
