On a sunny Sunday afternoon, the drone quietly took off. As it flew over a street crowded with civilians—none aware of the discrete contraption filming their every move—disaster struck. A gust of wind caught it, sending it high into the sky. Its operator struggled to regain control; it wasn’t to be, Mother Nature was too powerful. As it floated further and further away, it eventually lost contact with its operators, slowly falling to the ground. To this day, the drone remains lost.

No, this didn’t happen over the barren landscape of Afghanistan or Pakistan, where lethal drones are used to kill suspected terrorists. (And, much to the chagrin of those respective governments, civilians too.) It happened over Adams Morgan. And the drone wasn’t really a drone, but rather a two-by-two Chinese-made quadcopter mounted with a camera.

As Lawfare and the City Paper write, the quadcopter—a glorified remote controlled helicopter—belonged to neighborhood resident Adam Eidinger. (He was also the co-owner of recently shuttered Capitol Hemp.) It wasn’t his first, much less his second—it was his third, and with all the bells and whistles this one cost around $700 to build. Over the past few months, he’s used the quadcopters to fly over the neighborhood, producing stunning video footage in the process.

I was there when this one was lost. Eidinger invited me along to witness the flight, which was originally intended to film the crowds navigating up and down 18th Street for Adams Morgan Day. We climbed to the roof of a building along the crowded strip, Eidinger turned it on, and off it went. It easily hovered above the crowd, but to avoid the consequences of any possible malfunctions that would send it crashing to the ground, Eidinger had sent a friend to serve as an on-the-ground lookout.

He wasn’t needed. The quadcopter rose far above the low-slung buildings, and started proceeding south at quick clip. Though Eidinger said that quadcopter was good within a mile-and-a-half of the controller he was operating, the wind seemed to have gotten the best of its light-weight frame. It slowly floated across the blue sky, seemingly obeying no one but the direction of the wind. It eventually slowly descended—Eidinger said it “self-landed”—to the ground around Meridian Hill Park, where Eidinger searched for over a hour. And despite signs posted around the neighborhood—and an odd-sounding tweet from me—the quadcopter remains lost.

“Wait,” you might say. “Is this even legal?” Sure, and as Wired reported in June, pretty widespread. They’ve been used by Occupy Wall Street demonstrators to watch police activity during protests, and someone even floated the idea of using them for a taco-delivery service. As long as the quadcopters don’t go above 400 feet and don’t come near airports, flying them is legal. (The FAA will even eventually allow them for commercial use.) As for Washington’s restricted airspace, well, it doesn’t seem to apply to quadcopters, though I wouldn’t be surprised to see some rules on their use eventually. (I put in a call to the FAA to check, and am waiting on a response. Update: See below.)

Either way, Eidinger is still looking for the missing quadcopter. “I’ve scoured and scoured,” he told me today. “I’ve looked every day.” He’d like you to look around too—he’s offering a $250 reward if his drone is returned intact.

UPDATE, 4 p.m.: While we wait for the FAA to get back to us on the exact rules on using quadcopters in D.C., reader Matt Ashburn fished out a 2009 FAA rule that seems to forbid it:

THE FOLLOWING OPERATIONS ARE NOT AUTHORIZED WITHIN THE DC FRZ: FLIGHT TRAINING, AEROBATIC FLIGHT, PRACTICE INSTRUMENT APPROACHES, GLIDER OPERATIONS, PARACHUTE OPERATIONS, ULTRA LIGHT, HANG GLIDING, BALLOON OPERATIONS, TETHERED BALLOONS, AGRICULTURE/CROP DUSTING, ANIMAL POPULATION CONTROL FLIGHT OPERATIONS, BANNER TOWING OPERATIONS, MAINTENANCE TEST FLIGHTS, MODEL AIRCRAFT OPERATIONS, MODEL ROCKETRY, FLOAT PLANE OPERATIONS, UNMANNED AIRCRAFT SYSTEMS (UAS) AND AIRCRAFT/HELICOPTERS OPERATING FROM A SHIP OR PRIVATE/CORPORATE YACHT.