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When you absolutely, positively need to know what something is and you just don’t, what do you do? Ask somebody else. Maybe they have more experience with certain areas than you and can bring that to bear.
There’s no better place to do that than the internet, and in particular, putting the widely varied experiences of Reddit’s r/whatisthisthing community to work. Oh sure, sometimes you’ll get jokey replies — because who doesn’t like a little fun when the opportunity arises — but for the most part, it’s just a group of 1.4 million people who love solving mysteries.
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Like a Scooby-Doo gang for strangers with questions about strange objects, they’re great at revealing the truth, and it often doesn’t take them long to get to the bottom of things.
But every now and then, a question that comes to the community will lead to more and more questions.
Take, for example, what one person posted to the group that had some unexpected layers.
It seemed like a simple, straightforward question.
“Found this when I opened the gas lid cover of my car. I’ve never seen it before, any help?” asked s1mer2k.
Yes, the community could help with that one, and in about the same time it takes Scooby and the gang to pull the rubber mask off a villain.
As a few medical professionals pointed out, it’s for medication.
A user who goes by notmyfault identified it as a “carpuject” cartridge. “There is a carpuject device that screws into one side and then used to inject drugs. I have seen both morphine and Dilaudid in these vials but I’m sure they could contain non-narcotic drugs,” they wrote .
Another user, allisonnicol3, wrote that they “work in a dental office and that looks like a carpule of anesthetic.”
Some others pointed out that other drugs like insulin can come in a similar container.
So whatever the terminology, it’s for meds in a definitely professional, non-recreational setting.
However, allisonnicol3 got at the real question here, writing “Not sure how it would have gotten where you found it.”
Normally, it’s not a huge issue to open up someone’s gas cap.
However, as s1mer2k shared, his gas cap door locks when his car’s doors are locked, so he figures that “Someone must have put it there at a red light or in a gas station, otherwise I really don’t know.”
If not at a red light or gas station, when you would think he would have noticed, when could somebody have slipped the thing in?
It’s a classic locked room mystery. As some pointed out, somebody could have broken in with a screwdriver or something, but s1mer2k didn’t mention any signs of his gas cap lid having been tampered with, and a screwdriver definitely would have left a mark.
The suggestions did inspire s1mer2k to go back and take a closer look at his gas lid cap.
And, as it turns out the locking mechanism on the gas cap lid might not be quite as sure a thing as s1mer2k would like.
Tugging on the lid provided enough space that someone might just be able to slip something the size of one of those carpuject cartridges inside.
He also noted that he found the carpuject cartridge just inside the door.
If someone had slipped it in that tiny opening, that’s probably where it would have landed.
Of course, the how was only part of the mystery.
The other part of the equation, of course, is why anybody would place a thing like that under a random stranger’s gas cap lid.
Many suggested that whoever put it there was planning on coming back later for it, or had left it there for someone else to pick up, a classic spy movie-type “dead drop.”
As s1mer2k noted, however, his car does not make an ideal dead drop location because it doesn’t get parked in the same spot every day. “In my area at night within 1 square km (0.6 miles) there are over 300-400 cars parked God knows where,” he wrote , lamenting that this is the same reason he can’t put up some kind of video surveillance for his car. That really would have cleared things up here!
And if they could only open the door a tiny sliver in the first place, how were they going to get their carpuject back?
The most likely scenario, which s1mer2k agreed with, is that someone trying not to get caught must have dumped it there.
“I think some junkie was about to get searched and just hid it anywhere he could find,” he wrote . “I’m not going with it to the police or to a lab since that would require too much time and paperwork,” admitting that some elements of this will unfortunately have to remain a mystery.
Ah well. Still, a weird little event for sure.
