1 Shocking!

2 I didn't touch it, and I don't have a clue how it ended up there.

3 I suspect one of your ducks is going to be made to run laps by his drill sergeant tonight...

4 Didja call the cops to have it removed?

5 I thought about that. No, I didn't. My cell phone doesn't work and I'd have had to walk home to do it. And by now it's probably gone.

6 My guess would be that the school employs a security guard, and he dropped it.  Or it fell out of some mother's purse or car door.  I'd have picked it up, and if there was nowhere nearby to turn it in to, throw it in a trash can a safe distance away, where some kid wouldn't find it.

7 I think it probably was broken. Someone was monkeying with one of the teeth; they're not symmetrical.

8 I noticed that, but I thought the twisted prong was part of the branch.

9 Nah, if you do an image search, you'll see that each plastic horn has a pair of teeth at right-angles.  the inner ones are test probes so you can verify there's a charge, and the outer ones are the business end.  Looks like someone bent one of the test prongs and ripped off the corresponding attack prong.  I sure wouldn't want to touch the thing at this point so I don't blame Steven for not trying to dispose of it himself.
Steven, have you complained to Verizon about how much your phone doesn't work?  Seems like you might even have grounds to get out of your contract and try a different carrier, if you're having this much trouble with it.

10

I think it's broken. My brother is out of town, but he's going to be back on Saturday and he said he'd take me to the Verizon office.

I thought for a while it was the local cell, but I ran into one of my neighbors who has a Verizon phone and he said he was having no problems.

It's strange, since the GUI is working normally and the phone isn't displaying any error messages. So whatever the problem is, I'll find out Saturday.

It makes me a bit nervous not to have it. I got it in December so that I could keep it close to hand. In case I lost my balance and fell, I could use it to call for help. But now I can't.

Low probability danger, anyway. I haven't fallen once since I returned from the rehab. But it was also to be there in case I had another stroke, and I have no idea how likely or unlikely that might be.

11 It could certainly be the case that only part of it's gone bad.  I had a flip phone a few years ago that was fine for about 6 months, and actually continued to work except it would get hot--much hotter than it should.  I contacted AT&T and they replaced it, and of course smartphones are even more complex in terms of the number of discrete components.

12 It's pointless to speculate about it. I'll find out in a few days.