Animated without an animation?

No. It's "worn" while you are wearing it. When you drop it, it's an independently rezzed object in-world, just like any other object, it's not an attachment any more. If it was a no-copy AO (or had any no-copy animations in it), it'll be gone from your inventory at the point when you drop it.

So it could very well be active, rezzed in-world, and not show up in your inventory.

Thanks, Ziggy, that clears it up nicely.

BTW, I have done a *thorough* search inside the building where I was testing - beacons (scripted items) on - with no luck. Fortunately, it's small, but unfortunately, it's a skybox, so the ground around the teleport site, the two neighboring parcels, and the main house (all absolutely full of scripted objects) are what's left of the most likely spots for a dropped AO!

You could probably have someone write you a little script that runs a sensor scan for scripted objects owned by you. That might help... it's possible that you're being controlled by someone else's object, but the most likely explanation is an attachment that you dropped. You could also ask your neighbors to check for prims owned by you and return them (if they have the necessary permissions, and assuming you don't have legitimate builds on their parcels).

Those may help narrow the search down... or they may not.

There wouldn't happen to be a shoe under the bed?

The thing with Rock's animation, though, was that the animating object was also spamming him or something; somehow we knew the name of what we were searching for, so I could just make a little sensor that hunted for something with that name. Here, we have kind of a needle-in-a-haystack problem, as far as home-grown sensors are concerned. We know it's scripted, which is a start. We're about 99% sure it belongs to Ann, but probably everything else in sight does, too. Uselessly, we could know the key of an animation it contains in its inventory, but a script can't tell what's in another object's inventory anyway.

I'm just wondering if the Estate Tools "top scripts" thing could be useful in getting a list of scripted objects. I'm a Mainland geek, so I don't even know what these reports look like, but if they happen to have the location of the scripted object, one might search the list for likely suspects ("Franimation", "Wet Ikon", "ZHAO", etc.).

Anyway, failing all that, I could hack up a little sensor that just reports the names and locations of the 16 nearest scripted objects within 96m, and we could fly around with it till something suspicious showed up.

Any better ideas anybody?

Maybe there are fewer transparent items than scripted things? Most AO prims are transparent, so maybe use CTRL-ALT-T and look for the tiny red highlighted item probably sitting out on a floor?

But you would need to be close enough for tiny items to draw, I lucked out in a jewelry treasure hunt once because nobody could find a tiny jewelry box, the owner didn't even see it, and was ready to set out another, when I got closest instead of just camera'ing around, there it was!

FOUND IT!

"Dropped AO" (tiny one) was hanging in mid air, two meters or so above the ground just outside Cee's house across the street (group owned). Beacons for scripted objects didn't find it because there were too many scripted objects in the near vicinity. Used Select My Objects, and had a hell of a time searching the parcel across the street because almost *everything* in and around that house is group owned, so everything highlighted. (A script would have been almost worse, I guess, but thanks for that offer, Qie) Anyway, I just had to recognize everything I could, and gradually zoom 'way in on any "dot" that I couldn't recognize.

Thank you all for all the help reducing the problem to the the level where I could concentrate on one possible solution.

Anny walks with a waddle again!! Woot!
[I am not nuts -- I have a cute Japanese outfit which needs the "hobbled feet" effect.]

Great (solved) mystery, great thread!

Also,

Aw, Ruth is cute!