Is that the cache? Unfortunately no.

[+releasethedogs]

I am wondering what other peoples experiences are with thinking they see the cache and going for it, only to have it turn out to not be the cache after all. All stories strange, disgusting, funny or wonderful welcome.

 

Here is mine:

 

While caching in San Diego, I was looking for a cache. After looking for a few minutes I took a look at the hint with read "bushes". I was looking and could see something wayyyy back in the back that might be the cache. Being the only bushes close to GZ I decided to go for it. I reached as far as i could, wrapped my hand around the object and pulled it out of the bushes. Turns out a cat had crawled into the bushes to die and I had just pulled the rotting skin off of it tail. I ran 50-60 feet and puked in the ocean, immediately after wards I noticed the actual cache which was no where near GZ. lol.

Edited October 25, 2010 by releasethedogs

[+narcissa]

Taoiseach and I found a duct-taped container deep in a hole, covered with rocks. After determining that it was actually taped closed, we quickly put it back. He thinks it was a bomb, I think it was someone's dead cat. Purely conjecture, of course.

 

We did find the real cache shortly thereafter.

Edited October 25, 2010 by narcissa

[+Yurt]

I'd hidden a cache but not published it yet. I took my geoson along to see if he could find it using the coords. He reached in just behind the retaining wall and grabbed a human ...

no I can't say it. All the hand sanitiser in the world didn't seem enough at the time though.

[Andronicus]

A container of macaroni salad.

Edited October 25, 2010 by Andronicus

[+power69]

Chewed gum[never found a chewed gum cache]

Dog doo[never found a fake doo cache]

urine filled cache, yeah i found it

[+Method81]

I have lost count of the number of plastic bags I have fished out of bushes etc that are filled with dog doo

 

Other than this I once remeber searching for a roadside micro that had been placed under a rock in a fly typ, opening up numerous containers with month old food in is not my idea of fun.

[+Chokecherry]

Sturgeon head.

[+Fusilli Jerry]

rat trap

[+kunarion]

I am wondering what other peoples experiences are with thinking they see the cache and going for it, only to have it turn out to not be the cache after all.

At a cache called "Just Plain Ding'e" GC19H0P, I couldn't find anything. Re-thought it, and decided the "ding" might be a "bell" -- so it would be maybe bell-shaped. And that's when I noticed the bright purple mushroom. It looked like plastic, huge, really stood out, and was close to GZ. Finally! So I grabbed it and had a handful of soft, purple mushroom. Edited October 25, 2010 by kunarion

[+dfx]

GZ was pointing to a bunch of small spruce trees, so we started looking for the obvious camo-taped container or similar hidden in there somewhere. after a few minutes i spotted something dark and shiny way back there in the tree. i reached out to grab it. when i touched it, it was soft, fluffy and warm, and it moved. it was a real bird sitting on the nest, probably guarding the chicks.

 

we got out with DNF as the real cache wasn't there.

Edited October 25, 2010 by dfx

[+Nicodemus3]

Wasp nest: I thought I was looking for a guard rail cache and peered down along it from the backside and saw something about 20 ft away where a cache would normally lie. I was wrong and paid for it when I tried to pull it out.

 

Then I found this guy. I had recently found a cache made from a hollowed out turtle shell and first assumed I had found another. This one was alive and kicking though.

[GOF and Bacall]

I have lost count of the number of plastic bags I have fished out of bushes etc that are filled with dog doo

 

Other than this I once remeber searching for a roadside micro that had been placed under a rock in a fly typ, opening up numerous containers with month old food in is not my idea of fun.

 

Now why would you even look for a cache hidden in a trash dump? I'd log the DNF, and why, then put the cache on my ignore list. If I thought it was in an area that would get the attention it deserves, like a park or playground, I'd contact the authorities.

[+Method81]

I have lost count of the number of plastic bags I have fished out of bushes etc that are filled with dog doo

 

Other than this I once remeber searching for a roadside micro that had been placed under a rock in a fly typ, opening up numerous containers with month old food in is not my idea of fun.

 

Now why would you even look for a cache hidden in a trash dump? I'd log the DNF, and why, then put the cache on my ignore list. If I thought it was in an area that would get the attention it deserves, like a park or playground, I'd contact the authorities.

 

It was a road pull off point on a bend where someone had dumped ther trash. The rubbish probably wasn't there when the cache was placed, I pointed the situation out the CO so may have been rectified by now.

Edited October 25, 2010 by Method81

[Dinoprophet]

I had the reverse problem: I thought a tent behind a strip mall was someone's home and fled the area. Turns out it was the cache.

[+leitko4]

We turned our neighbors on to geocaching which went fine until what they thought was a cache turned out to be a box of dead kittens. :-( I don't think they've cached since.

[Clan Riffster]

Wasp nest

Brother, (sister?), I feel your pain! I was hunting a series, (each of 5 or 6 caches had a code to use to find a final), in an urban area, by a hider who is well know for his challenging caches. When we arrived at ground zero for one of the caches in the series, we found an antique staircase going up the side of an historic building. After visually scanning the obvious places where an urban micro could hide, I noticed that there was a fairly wide gap between the wall of the building and the main diagonal brace for the stairway. Hmmm... Because of the shadows, I couldn't see in the gap, so I headed up the staircase, with my hand in the gap, lightly dragging it along. My hand met resistance, which I thought had to be the cache. I grabbed it, and discovered it was a wasp nest. I had a whole bunch of stings before I made it down, screaming like a little girl. After my wife convinced me to stop acting like such a baby, we returned to the scene, staying back, searching with just our eyes. I found the cache, painted the same color as the staircase, magnetically affixed to the bottom of the highest landing, some 30' off the ground. I was elected to sneak my way through the swarming wasps, nab the cache, and sneak back through the wasps.

 

Onward!

 

We get to the next cache in the series and discover an antique military searchlight, with a lens about 3' across. The light was fully articulate, able to be moved to face all different directions. I saw a chunk of conduit running from the light to the concrete pad, but like the idiot I am, dismissed it, thinking there is no way a light this old could still be functional. We searched every square inch of the exterior, coming up empty, then I noticed that the lens was designed to open, with a simple latch to keep it shut. I opened the lens and reached my arm in between the shutters, and touched something I shouldn't have. A zap of electricity knocked me on my butt.

 

Having been envenomed and electrocuted in the same 1 hour period, I took the hint and left with a DNF.

[+SeekerOfTheWay]

Geocaching has made me:

 

Poke my fingers in a fire ant hill

Poke at wasps nests/ bees nests

Touch a cockroach (because i one found a fake palmetto bug cache)

Pet a frog (it was real)

Touch dog poo (luckily that really was the cache and it was fake)

Put my face in a cigarette receptacle

Pick up bottle caps

Squeeze chewed gum (eww, but I saw this container online)

 

Oh the horrors..

Edited October 25, 2010 by SeekerOfTheWay

[+The VanDucks]

We were on a caching road trip and wanted to find a particular cache just to get our numbers up. Several previous finders had reported a lot of trash, including a dirty diaper near GZ. Yep, saw the dirty diaper (it had been there for at least three months!) and lots of other trash; was just about to give up and log a DNF, when I just happened to kick a bag aside and it clanked. THAT was the cache, a plastic bottle inside a grocery plastic bag, in a pile of trash near a grocery store.

I logged a very diplomatic Found note that the CO might just want to stop by and see it the cache still appeared the way they had planned it to look!

[+geodoxies]

Deer skull

squirrel carcass

dead skunk about to explode

Hmm, seems to be a theme here!!

[+the4dirtydogs]

Two caching buddies tell me a story of finding something funny. They were up in the hills and one of the cachers spots a shiny object. As they get closer the shiny thing was egg shaped like the size of a big bison tube. So one of them grabs the egg from the bush and a wire is attached to one end of the egg. He keeps pulling and there's a switch which the other cacher grabs just then the egg starts to vibrate. The one holding the eggs hangs on to it just long enough to realize what it is and drops it. It wasn't the cache. We laugh at that story when we get together at events or on caching runs.

Edited October 25, 2010 by the4dirtydogs

[+Gamaliel]

A waffle iron.

 

In the shrubbery of an urban parking lot.

[+nittany dave]

Once, while caching with wimseyguy, I spotted the most enormous adult toy I've ever seen on the ground in the woods. And it had duct tape wrapped around the middle of it!

Heck I thought, it has duct tape on it, someone must have put a cache inside that thing. Just as I was reaching for it, wimseyguy calls out "got it" from about 15-20 feet away. I jerked my hand back just in time. I'm so glad he said that BEFORE I picked it up.

That toy must have seen some serious use if it had to be repaired with duct tape.

[mtbikernate]

a rusted out engine

[+Jhendu]

I had a cache hidden while I was living in Tucson that one of the lucky finders found an abandoned, and functional, XBOX 360 next to. He did he right thing and reported it to the police who ran the serial and then told him to enjoy it.

Edited October 25, 2010 by Jhendu

[+Sol seaker]

I've found a number of rat trap boxes.

 

A time or two I wondered... but decided to check every other possibility first. good thing.

 

I'm used to avoiding the garbage. Once we had exhausted every possibility, then I realized that old empty plastic bottle had a brightly colored plastic bracelet in it.

 

I don't know if the CO put it in there so you could tell it wasn't trash, or if it really was someone's trade item.

 

I left it in there.

[+Troy2593]

It's not much compared to a lot of stories here, but I was looking for a micro in some evergreen trees in an urban area. On the ground I found a container that appeared to be a geocache, but was actually a clear tube filled with sand. Kind of out of the ordinary.

[+The Leprechauns]

1. An altoids tin, 30 feet from the micro I was searching for, that contained the remains of someone's pet hermit crab. I can still recall opening that tin. It was something that cannot be unsmelled.

 

2. An urn containing the cremated remains of someone's pet. At least I hope it was a pet!

 

3. Last weekend, I reached in a crevice between two rocks, and pulled out a used sanitary napkin. I'll be logging my DNF of that cache in due course.

 

4. A pornography stash, found while searching for the cache hidden by Magellan for a contest back in 2003.

Edited October 26, 2010 by The Leprechauns

[+madmomma72]

Took a cross-section piece of a log off a stump, fully expecting the cache to be inside, only to find bear bait, mushy cookies and such. Ick. Not the grossest thing I've found, but the one most resembling an actual cache that wasn't a cache.

[+kpanko]

I had a cache hidden while I was living in Tucson that one of the lucky finders found an abandoned, and functional, XBOX 360 next to.

Did he leave something of equal or greater value?

[+HomeStyle]

Once, while caching with wimseyguy, I spotted the most enormous adult toy I've ever seen on the ground in the woods. And it had duct tape wrapped around the middle of it!

Heck I thought, it has duct tape on it, someone must have put a cache inside that thing. Just as I was reaching for it, wimseyguy calls out "got it" from about 15-20 feet away. I jerked my hand back just in time. I'm so glad he said that BEFORE I picked it up.

That toy must have seen some serious use if it had to be repaired with duct tape.

 

My eyes are leaking from laughing so hard. Beer just spewed out of my nose...

[+sduck]

rat trap

[+dmblair13]

I had the reverse problem: I thought a tent behind a strip mall was someone's home and fled the area. Turns out it was the cache.

 

That didn't happen to be in Allen Park, MI did it? There is a cache like that in Allen Park that was pretty cool. It was one of our first caches. We went looking for it at night and when we opened the tent there was a creepy halloween monster decoration. I must have jumped a foot when I saw it!

 

Luckly we haven't really mistaken anything weird or nasty for a cache yet. I've found a couple of tupperware like containers and exclaimed "found it" just to recant when they were empty or contained old food.

[Dinoprophet]

I had the reverse problem: I thought a tent behind a strip mall was someone's home and fled the area. Turns out it was the cache.

 

That didn't happen to be in Allen Park, MI did it? There is a cache like that in Allen Park that was pretty cool. It was one of our first caches. We went looking for it at night and when we opened the tent there was a creepy halloween monster decoration. I must have jumped a foot when I saw it!

 

Luckly we haven't really mistaken anything weird or nasty for a cache yet. I've found a couple of tupperware like containers and exclaimed "found it" just to recant when they were empty or contained old food.

That's the one. I only haven't gone back because I want to bring a big enough trade item.

[+Douce Us 5]

I have 2 good ones......

 

1. It was the Pig-pen hide that was part of a Peanuts cartoon cache series. There was no size information for the container. The clue was "stinky". Well because of the clue I ended up poking a too real looking dog pile with a stick.....I've seen those fake piles for sale on line, but no, it was definitely real.

 

2. It was a dead end barrier cache. I looked in the end and saw something dark on top about a foot in. I reached in, grabbed it, pulled it out. It was a wasp nest with about 10 very live wasps crawling on it. I instantly threw it to the ground. I have no idea how I didn't get stung even once! I'm pretty sure I screamed like a little girl too.

[+Douce Us 5]

I just found a deer spine hanging in a tree at ground zero.......

Edited November 1, 2010 by Douce Us 5

[+Clothahump]

Found a cache once that had been occupied by fire ants. Many, many of them.

[+junebugdawn]

Found a rather creative homemade pot bong on Monday...called a DEA agent to remove!

[+New Jersey TJ]

I wonder how many of those sprinkler heads I've partially disassembled still work . . .

[+Antihiro]

I wonder how many of those sprinkler heads I've partially disassembled still work . . .

 

QFT!

[+rickjill]

I wonder how many of those sprinkler heads I've partially disassembled still work . . .

 

QFT!

 

Yeah I wonder if all those springs and small parts inside actually do anything.

[+KPWSparky]

There was a particularly tricky one on my DNF list for a while. On my last visit, I carefully averaged my GPS readings, determined where actual GZ should be, and began searching again. After a short time I thought I had finally hit the jackpot! A small pouch tied to a tree branch. Took it down and unwrapped the contents only to discover a combination of used and unused feminine hygiene products. Not the worst find in this thread but, I haven't gone back to the site since. (I keep a CITO bag in my geo-pack so I removed the material from the site)