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desmognathus

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Everything posted by desmognathus

  1. How far from where it went missing did this one turn up, I wonder? The TB with the most miles on it that I have handled (PYSANKY, TBKBBT) went missing near San Francisco and turned up some 5 years later (and 300 miles away) near Santa Barbara.
  2. I believe there are some hints on ways to to this in the Snoogan's clinic thread stickied at the top of the TB page.
  3. If you look at the the numbers from shellbadger's collection, it would seem that a surprising number of offenders "holding" travel bugs for extended periods of time are, in fact, premium members. I'm planning to put out some locking ammo cans that require the finder to solve a puzzle or riddle to get the combination. Hopefully, this will help to some degree, but I doubt it will completely solve the problem.
  4. Not sure. I'm in Atlanta...that person is in NC. I saw that one, but didn't want to assume it was the same person. A lot of people sign or initial the log differently from their online ID. This has inspired me to try to devise some sort of "safe haven" cache for trackables...but I'm a little stumped as to how to achieve it. Perhaps make it some sort of PM 'challenge' cache, requiring some evidence of trackable ownership and a good check-in/out record. Not sure if that would violate guidelines, though... I'm betting some would say that constituted an additional logging requirement.
  5. Does this sound like your guy?
  6. I've done a bit of field work in the southern Appalachians, and while they don't get that high, I did find myself pausing to "botanize" on a routine basis on some sites. There were two study sites in the Chattahoochee National Forest in particular that were rather steep. The first one the field crew nicknamed "Hell", the second, "Sheer Hell".
  7. This one reminds me of Sam the Olympic Eagle (TBJDA3). Unfortunately, the last I heard of him, he was riding around in the trunk of someone's car.
  8. Very cool, Shellbadger! Reminds me that I need to do a better job of taking pictures of the bugs that I move. Good luck with the surgery, we'll be rooting for you.
  9. I wonder what would happen if you made one that smelled really bad?
  10. Another thing to make certain of is to check the box at the bottom of the contact email box that allows the person to reply to your email address otherwise when they try to answer you the system defaults to a no reply address and the email winds up lost in the ether.
  11. "They call me Mellow Yellow" by Donovan, I think, was a song from back in that general era. I can't remember the lyrics though.
  12. The travel bug dog tags are similar in size and shape to the dog tags worn by GI's. They are a sort of general purpose trackable used for unique travel bugs, tattoos, etc. I don't see why you couldn't actually put one on a dog. I'm sure others have already done so. You might want to put one of the rubber silencers on it to help keep the number from wearing off quite so fast as they are not engraved.
  13. Lately, I've been sending some bugs to visit events that aren't geocaching-specific. Up, Up 'n' Away is headed out to visit hot air balloon festivals. Fat Tire Flyer is headed to Frisbee/disc dog events. Tampion will be heading out to Civil War battlefields and reenactments. Bandy the Rodeo Clown is headed for... OK, you guessed that one. I'm planning another mission to some model rocketry events in Nevada. Maybe I should send one to Burning Man?
  14. I guess if you look at the surviviorship curve for travel bugs as a species, you'd have to conclude that they were closer to "r-selected" than "k-selected". Hope the Plethodons you handled weren't members of the glutinosus complex. The slime they excrete upon handling can't be scrubbed off, you just have to let it wear off over time. I handled my share of these guys while doing field work in the southern Appalachians back in the day.
  15. I couldn't find the acrylic keychain picture frames I usually use for my latest batch of bugs, so I picked up some of the Scotch self-sealing laminating pouches at WalMart. In the spirit of the TV show, "Home Improvement", I couldn't leave well enough alone and beefed them up a little. The tape reinforcement is Scotch transparent duct tape. The brass grommet is from a kit (General No. 71260) I got at a True Value hardware store. I hope that these last at least as long as the bugs do.
  16. I did find one recently that had an interesting surprise under the skirt.
  17. One positive about not clearing the TB inventory of a cache is that it can serve as a warning. If I see a cache with 6 bugs in inventory, but none in the can, then I'm not very likely to drop a bug there.
  18. I know you can upload photos to cache pages with the iPhone app, hadn't realized that you couldn't upload photos to TB pages...😞
  19. I wouldn't even mind the robo-visits if they took lots of pictures...
  20. I'm liking this!! Wonder if it would be possible to track all bugs in a race?
  21. Wow, this is both interesting and depressing. Might be interesting to see some of this data in histogram form, but I'm too lazy to do it right now. Wonder if the tb rescue page could help to recover some of the ones that appear to be "stuck". It did seem that some of the worst offenders were premium members. It would be interesting to repeat this study in different countries to get a feel for the cultural differences in regards to TB's. Anecdotal reports would seem to indicate that disappearances of TB's is highest in the US. If someone worked it right, I bet they could get a sociology thesis out of it.
  22. Here's one with almost a 5 year break in activity, PYSANKY, but that hasn't stopped it from logging almost 19 K miles since 2005.
  23. The only time I can think of that it really might matter is if the bug is in a race to accumulate mileage over a period of time, like the current UK Geocaching Podcast race. Even then I don't think that tenths would really matter so much, but dozens of miles over multiple iterations could result in a significant difference.
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