Things to throw away: actual trash.

Things to not throw away: your wife's 20-year-old wedding ring.

Make a note, Angelo Pericolo.

To be fair, wifey Bridget is partly to blame for the mishap, since she's the one who put the ring in a disposable cup. But none of that really matters now, since the heroic sanitation workers of Parsippany, N.J., were willing to brave what has been described as roughly 10 tons of garbage to find the darned thing.

And miraculously they succeeded in their venture, which could easily be likened to finding a needle in the world's grossest haystack.

The odds were stacked slightly in the Pericolos' favor since they tie their trash bags closed, unlike most in the dump, which were secured with a tie. (Sounds like the same thing to us, but to sanitation experts apparently there's a huge difference.)

Angelo Pericolo apparently dug into the work as well. "I was knee-deep in garbage," he told his wife. We can't help but think he'd be knee-deep in something else if he hadn't found it.

All of this just goes to show that garbagemen are more than people who take away your trash and slow traffic down to a maddening crawl -- they are also willing to root through your trash to find your valuables.