An interesting geocaching story

So I thought I would share this interesting caching story with you since it is indeed funny.

A few weeks back while I was killing time in Albany, NY, I decided to go for a few caches in the area near the airport. I was fortunate enough to find a lot of them and even brought home some travel bugs to move along.

There was a nice park that had two caches in it. I decided that I was going to try and go for one of them and leave the other one. I got about as far as I could and the GPS said I was right on top of it. I looked and looked around and had no luck. When I looked up the hint it said that it was a micro-cache. A 35mm film canister specifically. Now personally, I hate it when people hide those in the middle of the woods but I was there and figured I’d try and find it.

I looked around and tried to think of where I would hide it. I saw this log with a hole in it and it seemed like the log itself was hollow. When I looked into the log, I was surprised to see a pair of eyes looking back at me. I was sure it was a small animal of some kind. I dug out the camera and used the flash to try and snap a photo of it. It was hard to tell on the camera whether it was real or not, but after giving up on the cache, I went back to my hotel and looked at the photo.

The photo in question is this photo here. I was pretty sure it was a plastic mouse after looking at it, but hey, you never know.

Upon Tamara’s suggestion, I emailed the cache owner of the cache to find out what the cache actually was. Here’s the email I sent.

Hey there. I wanted to ask you something about your cache, Marsh Rat.

Is there an actual toy mouse or something in a log that is the cache? I was in that area looking for caches and I went towards this one and I thought I knew where it was, but I saw what looked like eyes from a mouse or rat inside a log. So, I took a photo of it and when I got back to my hotel, I looked at the picture and it looks like a plastic toy. Is this the cache itself, or did I perhaps take a picture of an actual mouse? If it is the cache, I can send you the photo to verify I was actually there, and I would log it as a find. Please let me know. Thanks.

^Zor^

I checked my email earlier this morning and found that he had replied to my email. Here’s what he said:

Hi there, yourself,
First off, I must thank you for making me laugh so hard at reading your post.Thanks for making me laugh so much. Yes, by all means, go and log this one as a “FOUND IT” You DID FIND IT!!! It is a toy rat, with a 35mm film canister in it’s belly. You do deserve a smiley on this one!! Marsh Rat is one of three such caches that I own.

I look at caching this way….. Any one can place a film canister in the woods, but it’s what you do with that film canister that makes the differance.I try to place caches with a different twist on them…just to make them a little more fun. If you try for any more of my caches..you should be some what pre warned. Hope that you enjoyed your time caching down here with us.

~highland ranger

I logged it as a find (albeit late) and got a good laugh myself out of the whole thing.