Ever leave something in a golf cart?

Something that's really valuable, or an embarrassing or strange item? It happens.

A survey of local golf courses illustrated just how tenuous it can be to empty your pockets while golfing, placing valuables in the shelf at the front of the cart and retrieving them when you finish a round.

The most common abandoned items are club covers for a driver, fairway wood or putter.

But it is common to also leave shoes, watches, wedding rings, cell phones, pagers, car keys, candy and money. Somebody once left a box of shotgun shells at Cascade Fairways in Orem. Go figure what that guy was shooting.

Kent Belcher at Sleepy Ridge has found wedding rings in carts twice.

"But the interesting thing is the amount of time it took to reclaim them," he said. "I never take my wedding ring off. I imagine a guy going home and his wife asking, 'Where is your ring?' And what's he going to say?"

In both cases, Belcher said it took nearly a week for the guy to come back to the golf course and ask if a ring had been turned in.

At Tri City Golf Course in American Fork, starter Josh Jensen reports he's seen a lot of insulin kits left in carts, but the strangest thing he's seen is a baby pacifier.

At Riverside Country Club, someone who works toting clubs off carts says the strangest abandoned item he's seen is a package of condoms.

Tracy Zobell, head professional at Payson's Gladstan Golf Course, may have collected the most interesting leftovers I've ever heard of.

His staff has found illegal drugs in golf carts, including marijuana and crystal methamphetamine. One time he found a bundle of money, a clip secured by a rubber band. When he counted the dough, it came to $6,500. Apparently it belonged to a jeweler who had just sold some jewelry and placed the money in the cart after a sale. And left it.

Zobell found the owner. Nobody ever called to claim the drugs.

Then there's the case of Mike Carroll, who panicked when he lost something of value at Gladstan last fall. Mike, 61, who grew up in California, recently moved to Orem from Boise, Idaho. He's in the process of establishing a business as a barber at Derrell's in downtown Provo. Carroll wears a set of partial false teeth. They are uppers and include six teeth, most of them up front. He has to take the partial out when he eats. Mike had to go the fake chomper route after a dentist practiced on him and promptly broke off teeth and produced half-way root canals.

Over the years, Mike's routinely left his false teeth in napkins at restaurants, and they've been thrown in the garbage.

Once he ate at a bar and while playing shuffleboard, realized the waitress had taken his napkin/teeth. He wandered over and discretely whispered in her ear what had happened. The bartender saw the exchange and wanted to know what was going on. So, the waitress shouted across the room, "Oh, this guy left his teeth on the table and I threw them in the garbage." The room erupted in laughter. The waitress and bartender started going through the garbage until Mike stopped them and asked if he could take the bag home and search it. He did. And he found his lost treasure.