TopHatSnake

I found a cache in the fridge at work yesterday, still kinda scratching my head over that one... The log was just a napkin, and the only piece of swag was a ham&cheese sandwich. It looked like I was FTF though, so I signed the log, and swapped in a keychain, while muttering about these new cachers not knowing the guidelines, "no food in a cache". It's funny, I checked on the map and can't find the icon for that location yet. Maybe it hadn't published yet...

I always sign with green ink (I'm a gardener). I've actually walked away from caches, leaving them unsigned and with smiley unclaimed because I didn't have a green pen. If there's room I'll also leave my snake-wearing-a-top-hat insignia. I draw a lowercase Y with a forked tail, and give it two eyes and a top hat. If there's more space I'll also leave a note about my adventure, and express appreciation for the cache.

I once found a letterbox hybrid cache that had an awesome whitetail buck stamp in it. After taking a copy of the stamp, my geo-mutt and I headed on down the trail towards another cache, only to turn a corner and come face-to-face with two real, live bucks! Often an older dominant buck will have a younger, smaller buck tagging along with him during mating season, and that was exactly the situation here. Neither of these bucks had any fear of this cacher and his four-legged partner as we faced each other down, standing in the trail about 20 feet apart. My dog was off-leash at the time, and my first thought was "oh Lord, Lexie's gonna chase these deer into the middle of next week, and I'll never find her again in this brush!" Lexie is actually a coydog, a dog-coyote hybrid, and can be a bit unpredictable and headstrong. So what did my coy-dog do, as a full-furred member of two predator species, truly only one generation removed from her wild "ancestors", when the lead buck stomped and snorted at us? Cowered behind my legs and WHIMPERED! Thanks for the back-up, ya worthless mutt! Thankfully I've been around livestock most of my life, and am well-versed in all the loud, harsh vocalizations and wild body gyrations proven to get any large ungulate moving, and these hot-blooded bucks proved to be no exception. I'm still gobsmacked by the coincidence of finding the deer stamp, followed mere minutes later by two live specimens. It makes for a good story anyway.

Two of my caches had to be archived this week. They were both along dirt paths in a thickly undergrown forest in a park, right in the middle of town. Five minutes into the woods, it was very easy to forget you were still inside city limits. This alone made them my favorites of all the, albeit few, caches I own. As I walked past that park on my way to work last week, I noticed crews clearing out the brush, leaving just the biggest trees. Miraculously, both caches were still in place, and completely unharmed. However, the twisting, shaded trail-through-the-forest experience was utterly destroyed. I'm sad the caches had to be archived, but I am glad I discovered the changes in the area before any unsuspecting cachers had a disappointing experience with them. Ces't la vie, farewell "Minnow Haven" and "Tools Needed". Wow, that got a little sadder than I expected.

I live in a pretty cache-dense area, but before now I've always focused on anything other than PnGs. This month has been a great way to clean up my map of all those caches I would probably never have gotten to. This is also my first attempt at maintaining a streak, and that has been a real challenge for me. The majority of my finds so far have been 10pm or later, with a few barely squeaking in on the last few minutes of the day. However, it is blisteringly hot here in Texas right now, so night caching works out well. All in all, I've really enjoyed this. Haven't missed a day yet!

The first cache I ever found, my introduction to this game, was a front-yard cache. Hanging in the fence line of my parent's front yard. Directly in front of our house. Admittedly, what we consider "the front yard" is an area that could be called "paddock" sized, but still! It's right next to the gate my siblings and I used to wait for the school-bus at. Had been there 3 years, with dozens of finds. And is still there.

I recently discovered the Oriental Trading Co. website http://m.orientaltrading.com/mt/www.orientaltrading.com?un_jtt_v_un_dummy=yes I haven't made any orders off of it yet, but it certainly looks like a good way to stock up on a lot of smaller trading items for dirt cheap. As a signature trading item, I make 12-gauge fridge magnets, using craft magnets from hobby lobby and spent 12-gauge shells. Those usually seem to get snapped up fast, and I've gotten a few emails praising them.

Before I found something better to do out in the woods (geocaching), this was a game I played often, placing rocks or sticks or leaves where they wouldn't normally be found, with no real purpose other than the knowledge that at some time in the future, somebody else might notice it, and be left scratching their head, wondering why. I've placed lots of rocks up in the fork of trees, or made completely unnatural stacks, or arranged all the fallen sticks and branches over an area in a linear pattern. Have you ever seen a pine tree with 3 inches of post oak leaves carpeting the ground underneath? I have. It's subtle, but a complete mind-twister when noticed.

I'm glad I started reading the forums as early as I did in my caching career, it helped me out on situations like this http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=7147a1ad-6c64-456d-b1b9-9c85be835ecc It was a post cap hide at the top of a street sign, that I heard fall into the pole as I pulled the cap off. I dropped a fishing lure with two treble hooks down the pole for a while, trying to fish it out, with no luck, so I replaced it. A few days later the CO (who I'm good friends with now) emailed me, reminding me to log a find.

Wow! Thanks for all the positivity, y'all! Also, thanks to the Possum Hunters, my trusty carhartt has a new zipper pull with a story. Anti-hunters of any sort complaining about this were my primary concern, but you guys have pretty well put that to rest.

I recently made a batch of deer antler keychains, with the intention of using them as trade items, and then started wondering if some people might find this objectionable. What would y'all think if you found one of these in a cache?

Howdy! I'm TopHatSnake! I live and geocache in College Station, Texas. I stumbled onto geocaching while visiting my parents in Central Texas, and found this strange little bottle hanging from fishing line in a tree, directly in front of the house I grew up in. I logged my first three caches on 11-11-11, without really knowing the significance of that date in the Geoworld, just a happy coincidence. As we say in Texas, Cache on, ya'll!