Out lure fishing for pike the other day and I found a genuine message in a bottle! It was a simple but heartwarming message from the author, it’d travelled maybe 10 miles and was in the river for 4 months. I actually captured the moment on my gopro, and the message cheered me up no end on a cold winters day.
Now, there wasn’t a number or email in the message so couldn’t let the person know it’d been found so the only option in that moment was to roll it up, pop it back in the bottle and throw it back for someone else to find.
I made the world a little bit better for a minute or two but then promptly reversed my good work by chucking a glass bottle back in the river. I’ve felt torn since, perhaps I should have kept the message as a keepsake and disposed of the bottle? What is the correct etiquette concerning messages in bottles?
The police weren’t involved BTW