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Muggles Gone Wild!


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A somewhat similar thing happened at one of my (now archived) caches. The cache was placed on county land, but a nearby homeowner considered the property to be hers and yelled at a cacher who was looking for the cache. The placement was fine, but I archived it to prevent other cachers from having to endure her shreaking tirades.

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Reason #14 why I don't place or look for caches in residential neighborhoods.

 

A good rule to live by, BUT: once he pulls alongside me and starts threatening, anything I do is justified, and I think I can defend that in court.

 

Exactly... I don't ever expect to need to defend myself in the woods against any animal.. but in town it's a different situation. Here is when you get on your cell phone and call the police, or if you have no cell use your GPS and pretend to be calling.....

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Didn’t happen when caching but I had a guy follow me. Not sure what his problem was but the funny part was I made 3 left hand turns. Once he followed me on all 3 I called 911. Well while I was on the phone I had ask were the police station was since I was new to that area. They told me how to get there but an officer was near by. I ask them were he was. He waited for me to bring the guy to them. Now for the best part! The moron didn’t have a driver’s license! The moral of the story is if your going to mess with someone have a valid drivers license.

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The operant theory here, that the cacher did not employ, is that Discretion is the Better Part of Valor.

I had a similar situation benchmarking. The mark is on the wing wall of a bridge on a county highway. The bridge belongs to the county. It is public property. The benchmark was on the other side of the guard rail. As I put my leg over the guard rail, I heard a voice from 200 feet away "Get off my property". I was not about to argue law with the old crone. A smiley, or a benchmark, is not worth the aggravation. Nor is alienating the neighbors. So I drove off. Oh, well.

There are many instances of people trying to usurp public property. Is it worthwhile aggravating them? Best example is a billboard on Rte 46, viewable from Rte 15, and the ramp from 46 to 15. The owners of the billboard decided that the trees were obstructing the view of their billboard. So they cut them down. Well, it just so happens that that narrow strip of land is a town park! It is even planted with lilies. I never heard how much they got fined for that!

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Wow. That's harsh. Only muggle that's ever confronted me was a polite older couple on a bike trail who just asked me "you wouldn't happen to be geocaching, would you?", then had a very nice conversation about how much a good starter GPS would cost. Don't know if they ever got into it or not, but they seemed interested.

 

That said, if somebody yells "Get off my property", I don't care if it's really theirs or not, I'm scramming. Some people are just nuts about their private property, even when it isn't theirs, and I don't want no trouble! :(

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Sometimes it's fun to let nutters rant!

 

I had one on county ROW, 100 yards from this old country coot's house. Every time someone came to look for it he'd come down the road hollering about "git offa my propity!" It became a running joke in our caching community and I left it up just to hear the stories. It took the old boy a year to find the cache but he finally got it.

 

Another cache, not mine, was placed (with permission) at a commercial building that had three different businesses in it. The building owner and two of the business managers liked the hide, the third didn't, and he would come shrieking into the street to berate anyone looking for the cache. Since he was a, shall we say, flaming feminine homosexual (his business is a gay theater) his antics and carrying on became legendary - people would go revisit the cache just to crank this cat's tractor. He never threatened violence, but was always beat up - one week he'd have a black eye, the next his nose would be broken and bandaged - I shudder to think of the life this poor old drama queen lives, but nevertheless his antics were entertaining.

 

I ain't saying it was right, but it is what it is; and some folks just have a warped sense of humor!

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One thing to keep in mind is that just because a cache is there or supposed to be there or we think it is there, that fact does not give us the absolute right to be at any given location at any time.

 

As said before fence lines do not always equate with property bounderies. And we never know how previous visitors conducted themselves while geocaching either and may have possibly riled the natives with some unfortunate actions. If I get a similiar vocal warning about private property I am out of there and am not going to stand around and defend my rights to look for tupperware, it's just not worth it. Hell, the guy may have had his lawn tractor stolen the night before and is loaded for bear at this point.

Edited by Bill & Tammy
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My favorite scene from tyhe "Beverly Hillbillies" (Movie) was when some kids in a car pull up next to Jed's old truck and point a handgun out the window. Jed says: "That's nice, this is what I pack" and levels a double barrel shotgun in thier direction. That's one way to get someone off your tail. <_<

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See, this is where (in my area) ASSUMING that the hider has indeed gotten permission to hide something can be dangerous. There are both property lines and easement lines and they are not the same thing.

So far we have not had any problems with muggles being wicked...but that car-chase thing, wow. My former-cop cousin is quite a handy person to cache with in that case!

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Reminds me a car chase I once had. I suppose the guy thought I had cut him off or something, but he chased me all over a neighborhood, even driving on the sidewalks to finally cut me off. He got out of his car and started walking up to my car. So I pulled out and sent him flying over my hood, never looked back. The next day the police called me up to answer some questions. They determined over the phone that my actions were justified self-defense (no, I didn't kill him, but he was injured).

 

Our area has property tax records online, so it's fairly easy to check if a cache is on private property before going out for the find.

Edited by salmoned
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Reminds me a car chase I once had. I suppose the guy thought I had cut him off or something, but he chased me all over a neighborhood, even driving on the sidewalks to finally cut me off. He got out of his car and started walking up to my car. So I pulled out and sent him flying over my hood, never looked back. The next day the police called me up to answer some questions. They determined over the phone that my actions were justified self-defense (no, I didn't kill him, but he was injured).

 

Our area has property tax records online, so it's fairly easy to check if a cache is on private property before going out for the find.

 

I had a similar experience:

 

Driving home from work I had an individual following closely, flashing his brights and honking his horn. He was apparently incensed by some perceived infraction, although I honestly have no idea what it was. I proceeded on home and parked in the street, and this individual parked in front of the next house up. He got out of his car and started to walk toward me, and I got out of my truck, got a shovel from the bed, and walked toward him. At this point he seemed to decide that there wasn't really anything he wanted to talk with me about, after all.

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Archiving was the best bet. Yes, the guy may have been full of B.S. about the property but why subject other cachers to him?

 

I was out last w/e trying to find one of hte last train tunnels through the mountain where I live and ran across a similar person claiming they owned the road I was on and all the surrounding acreage. Now I KNOW he's full of it, but do I want to subject other cachers to dealing with this guy? No.

 

I'm going to find another way into it and save everybody the hassle. Too many stupid things happen because people get riled up too quickly. Harsh worse turn to violence too quickly for my taste these days.

 

Fortunately, I'm prepared to defend myself quite adequately, but that's a whole other story.

 

tkdgifad2.gif

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All I can say is that this was completely handled wrong. Whether or not a raging lunatic is right or wrong about the property line, it is his home turf and you have no idea whether or not he is completely mad or completely right.

 

I would err on the side of caution. I think I would probably have just dnf'ed and posted about the incident or tried it again later if I just had to get that find.

 

This kind of incident does nothing but harm for our cause.

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All I can say is that this was completely handled wrong. Whether or not a raging lunatic is right or wrong about the property line, it is his home turf and you have no idea whether or not he is completely mad or completely right.

 

I would err on the side of caution. I think I would probably have just dnf'ed and posted about the incident or tried it again later if I just had to get that find.

 

This kind of incident does nothing but harm for our cause.

 

We do not look for trouble while caching. BUT, we will call the police ourselves if we feel we are in danger, and I will not back down from a BULLY under any circumstances.

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