Nutty Squirrel

I do not have a negative view of police. I did nothing to insult the police. And I was confronted for taking pictures; I even had the video camera running at the time the hummer pulled up to prove it. Screw you all!

It probably helps a lot. Would also help if you have a herd of small children all around you... its normal for them to run all over the place, peer into things, climb over everything, etc.

It wasn't. Your log would notify the cache owner who can then decide if there is a problem and then act ot solve it. I already removed the flag. And that's why I asked the question in the first place. Its not unreasonable to question whether a cache should be in a place like this... I don't consider it a good thing if cache placement results in calls to the police. Now, police just happening to observe you as they're going about their duties and wondering what's up, that's different. BUT, people who live next to the cache not knowing about it and then causing costly police incidents? Something's not right here!

Dup

Dup

I'm never going to do any more caches that are in plain view of people's houses. I'll still do it if a virtual stage happens to be there (e.g. such as when I need to look for a name on the monument by the street in order to get the coords). I much prefer woods. To the old lady: sorry if I alarmed you. I won't be back (but others may!)

Its OK, I only pick on mean, nasty busy-body types of old people (and young people, for that matter). People should report suspicious activity only if its suspicious. What else could I have been doing? Planting a bomb to blow up all the people (all 0 of them) in the park? Stealing a rock? Besides, considering the age of the geocache, you would think she'd be used to people showing up, poking around, doing something with a tupperware box and then leaving. Its not suspicious if it happens frequently (it becomes normal). And, I can't believe that I'm the first person she saw doing this, so why pick me (and in broad daylight... some geocachers do it in the middle of the night with flashlights and I can understand that'd look strange).

And while screaming "allah akbar" (or however you spell it) and while wearing a bulky tactical vest that keeps all my geocaching gadgets in easy reach... nah... I like excitement but not this kind of excitement.

Either that, or they need to do the find within 5 minutes. I think the police department is about 5 minutes away, so she must have called them almost immediately upon my arrival before I had a chance to start any significant poking around.

OK, I changed my Needs Archiving log to just a regular note. The Chelmsford cache is called Town Center Treasure. The cache has been found many times before, so I have no idea why she decided to call the police when I was there. No other logs mention any incidents (but if you leave before the police arrive, you wouldn't know... if I was just one minute faster, I wouldn't have known either). By the look of some of the logs, some of the people were there much longer than me and even moved rocks around. (I hate moving rocks in a wall... can make the wall look like crap... I'm for responsible non-destructive geocaching.) It could just be that old ladies hate me simply by sight. They've called authorities on me before for absurd reasons. One time I was out in the dead-end dirt road street in front of my parent's house taking pictures of my new wife, and the neighborhood moonbat called the National Guard on me... they arrived with a Hummer and brandishing M-16's and demanded that I stop taking pictures. We almost got gitmo'ed. (My wife is non-white... that's what may have set off that particular old lady, probably thinks that every non-white person is "muslim". I hate racists.)

No it was definitely because I was there. There was no one around anywhere, no one going for walks, no one doing anything except driving by. The park is just a big field with a wall and bench, and its even nearly devoid of trees. If someone's curious about a parade of people coming and going from there (not much of a parade... one group every few weeks), perhaps they should try walking up to the people and asking! I don't go call the police unless I have a good reason.

I wasn't familiar with the reference, but I just looked it up and I see a close resemblance. And I wasn't about to walk over the to officer. I routinely carry pepper spray (never know when you'll get a dog attack while geocaching in the woods), and police can get REALLY excited about finding that on you even though I have it legally.

I was doing a cache today that's around the center of a town and its final stage ends in a small park... the park is a grass field with a rock wall down the middle of it and one park bench right in the middle. At the edge of the park is one old house and its impossible to hide from the view of that house's windows. The rest of the park has a road that curves around it and cars driving by within view. Anyway, I spent about 5 minutes looking for the cache. It was inside the wall (not my choice... I'd never place a cache inside a wall in a public place). I didn't have to move anything except the rock that was in front of the cache. The rest of my searching was just gazing at the wall around a 30 foot long section of it... its hard to be inconspicuous when there's nowhere to hide and you have to crouch down to peer into wall holes. I found the cache, sat down on the bench, signed the log, then quickly put it back and left. Just as I exit the park's premises, a police car pulls up in a hurry, sirens on and lights flashing. I was far enough away that he didn't notice me, and I stood at a distance behind something and watched. An old moonbat rushes out of the house, all frantic and panicked, and was busy pointing out to the officer the park bench that I was around. I couldn't hear her actual words but I could tell by her behavior that she was acting as if someone was just shot in the park and then dragged away. Seeing a man in a park for 5 minutes was probably more excitement than she's seen in a long time! I can tell the type... they have NOTHING to do and just sit there in their house peering out the windows ALL DAY LONG just waiting for SOMETHING to happen. And then they call the police first excuse they get. Seeing that my presence was now unknown, I wasn't about to walk over there and explain what's going on. I know what would have happened... the nasty old lady would have pointed and yelled "That's him!! Get him!" and next thing you know it'd be "FREEZE! On the ground or I shoot!" People like that lie, so the officer would probably believe I'm a threat based on all the frantic story telling from the old lady. I'm just doing a hobby and I really don't need that kind of problem. I'm still expecting the police to arrive at my house and bang on the door any minute now. I'm worried and I didn't do anything wrong! I said what happened in the cache log and flagged it as "needs archiving". I don't think a cache should be by the house of someone like this. I hope that was the right thing to do.

Thanks, I didn't know I could do that! But, the caches appear differently than they usually did... only one icon, a crosshair/bullseye type of thing. Any way to fix that?

Today I went back there and realized that the cache is on Mass. Audubon Society property. I'm pretty sure they don't allow (or at least get annoyed by) caches, and besides the signs around the perimeter say "no electronic devices" (whatever for??). So, I won't be trying to fix up that one after all. It probably should be archived. Today I found a hide for my own cache in the same woods but not on MAS property. I'll complete the deployment of it next weekend.

I'd like to fix up his cache, although what do I do with his junky custom-made PVC container? Just toss it? Might as well... he may not ever notice that his cache has been refreshed, so he may not miss his container.

I just checked the owner's profile; he has one other cache -- it is also broken, wet, lots of logs saying so, full wet camera, and a maintenance request 8 months ago. Plus he signed up in 2002 and only has 43 finds. (Got bored and stopped geocaching, perhaps?)

Someone else posted a needs maintenance before I did (must have just missed him in the woods).

Thanks for that link. The cache in question is in an area that has a fairly low cache density (one other in the area half mile away, plus a micro at the parking lot). So, I may be best off just adding my own cache in that area. Maybe the geolitter will get archived someday if left there long enough.

90% of the caches are in tick-infested areas and I usually pick up a few. A tick bite can KILL you, or at least make you very sick. Wow, 90% of the caches are dangerous and should be removed! I know... I shouldn't feed the trolls... but I can't help it!

Today I found a cache in a beautiful location, but the cache itself has pretty much become geolitter. Totally soaking wet, couldn't even sign log, drying this off is pretty much impossible. I even saw something in the cache that I first thought was a chalk board eraser... turned out it was a disposable camera that had become mush. There are a number of log entries of people pointing out the awful condition of the cache, no response from owner and that owner hasn't logged on in almost 3 months. I'd be happy to fix the cache and adopt it, but what do you do if the owner appears gone? How long would he have to not log on before geocaching.com can just give the cache to someone else without owner's permission? Regardless of adoption or not, I'm probably going to go replace the container and log, and clean the contents anyway. Although, his container isn't just tupperware... its custom made... it happens to leak like a sieve and is unnecessary, but I'm still reluctant to replace someone's custom-made container. (Maybe just put a smaller better container inside the leaky container?) (This isn't the first I've found abandoned... there's a local geocacher around here who hasn't been paying attention to any of his caches in over a year. I did develop/replace the camera in one of his caches.)

My local target has them in what I'd call the "food storage container" section. I first looked in the rubbermaid bin area but that's not the right place to look, and the employees had never heard of them. They had small ones, and tall ones, but no long shallow ones... I really want a long shallow one (such as what you'd use for two sandwiches side by side instead of on top of each other).

You're going to visit relatives for a holiday, and before leaving you look up all the caches in their area and only end up spending 5 minutes of the day actually WITH the relatives.

I'm near Manchester NH; 11 degrees?? That'll be near impossible for me to see. I do amateur astronomy and whenever the computers tells me something I want to see is that low, I know its gonna be behind the trees unless I'm on something elevated. Oh well!

There's a bridge cache near me, but that bridge is now a foot bridge in the middle of the woods, and over a stream, that at most gets 1 person crossing per day. Something like that should be fine. http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...c4-cc199e38f6c4