You never know just what you might come across.

That’s the takeaway from an unexpected discovery in the community of Barre, in western New York.

A farmer there, Kirk Mathes, says someone in his fields managed to find something he definitely hadn’t planted: a giant old safe, weighing 500 to 600 pounds.

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Mathes had it moved to one of his barns, with help from some heavy equipment, and as they looked it over, they found a note taped to the side.

On a small sheet of yellow lined paper, someone had scrawled, “if you can open, you can have what’s in side.” (sic)

Some of the people who got to the safe before Mathes even learned about it decided to try to crack it open.

He said they knocked both the handle and the dial off.

But it stayed shut.

Giant old safes that have been sitting in the ground for who knows how long can be tough to unlock.

And so Mathes decided, maybe it’s better that way.

There could be anything inside the safe – or nothing at all.

He and others in town thought that in this perplexing, confusing, difficult, bizarre year, the safe had become a welcome distraction, so why spoil the surprise?

The safe may end up in a local display on town history, but for now, Mathes says it’s been well hidden.

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What do penguins and spacecraft have to do with each other?

Usually not much, but that’s just changed.

The British Antarctic Survey was studying images from a European satellite and spotted 11 new colonies of Emperor penguins.

They were able to find penguins from space!

How do I sign up to help with that job?

What’s inside this mystery safe? Orleans Co. farmer says it should stay unknown (WHAM-TV)

Scientists Just Discovered 11 New Emperor Penguin Colonies. From Space (Popular Mechanics)

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Photo by Benjamin Reay via Flickr/Creative Commons