Why DO muggles steal caches?

[+LycanthroFee]

I've never understood what the appeal is in them taking a small magnetic nano, or a random bit of tupperware. If I wasn't a geocacher and I found a weird container, I'd perhaps poke around, open it up, look around, but I wouldn't take it unless it looked like a lost item that I should turn in.

 

I just don't get it, why do they take them? Thankfully none of mine have gotten muggled yet, but I just don't understand.

[+narcissa]

I've never understood what the appeal is in them taking a small magnetic nano, or a random bit of tupperware. If I wasn't a geocacher and I found a weird container, I'd perhaps poke around, open it up, look around, but I wouldn't take it unless it looked like a lost item that I should turn in.

 

I just don't get it, why do they take them? Thankfully none of mine have gotten muggled yet, but I just don't understand.

 

I think most of the time it is just some sort of grouchy no-fun type who finds it and thinks it ought not to be there.

[+wmpastor]

I've never understood what the appeal is in them taking a small magnetic nano, or a random bit of tupperware. If I wasn't a geocacher and I found a weird container, I'd perhaps poke around, open it up, look around, but I wouldn't take it unless it looked like a lost item that I should turn in.

 

I just don't get it, why do they take them? Thankfully none of mine have gotten muggled yet, but I just don't understand.

 

I think most of the time it is just some sort of grouchy no-fun type who finds it and thinks it ought not to be there.

 

Or a kid who thinks it's interesting and either thinks it does belong to someone or doesn't care. (Oh, cool, I can put this nano on the fridge!)

[+AustinMN]

Or it just looks like trash.

 

Not that any poorly maintained absentee-CO caches ever get to be like trash, mind you. That never happens.

[+The Leprechauns]

For caches hidden in public areas, including business parking lots, I would additionally observe that maintenance and security staff are frequent causes of "muggles" who remove caches. (I wouldn't call it stealing, especially if the cache is hidden without permission.) If you're on a landscaping crew that's cleaning up a hedge row at the edge of the business parking lot, and there's a pill bottle at the base of a shrub, it gets scooped up just like the discarded soda cans, plastic bags and food wrappers. If you're a security guard who observes a carload of people drive straight to an empty corner of the parking lot, spend 2 minutes at a lamp post or guardrail, and then speed off, you might investigate and discover a magnetic hide-a-key that you then remove.

 

Even if permission is granted by a business owner, store manager, city parks department or other responsible official, that permission is no good if it isn't communicated to the guy with the leaf blower and trash bag, the guy with the two-way radio and security badge, and the stockroom employee taking a cigarette break behind the store.

 

That happened to me once, with a cache I hid with permission, magneted under a drinking fountain in a town square. When plumbers fixed the drinking fountain, the cache disappeared.

[+cerberus1]

Similar to the Leprechauns, a few stores around here had "caches" across from the only spots employess/customers could grab a smoke, or near shipping docks out back, where nobody really has a business being.

One was in a tree at the entrance of a very-busy grocery store. Sheesh...

COs seemed surprised that they'd turn up missing.

All with permission issues. I asked.

[+cerberus1]

The other 2/3rds had a cache in her church's little cemetery (with permission).

Never a problem with grounds people, but whenever the boy scouts worked on projects there, it'd turn up missing.

Usually filled with craft stuff anyway (little wood build-it kits mostly), she just considered it a donation.

[+hzoi]

I concur with the above and add, the security-minded might be concerned with unattended containers in their area, especially near, say, a government installation or airport. Many a cache has ended up as an inadvertant training tool for many a local bomb squad.

[+dprovan]

I think most of the time lost caches are removed by someone that has no idea that they have any value. If they actually notice that they swept up or mowed over a cache at all, most likely they thought it was trash. The boy scout example is a good one: likely that cache is removed every time the boy scouts are around because they're cleaning up, not because they have malevolence towards geocaching.

 

I know there are some cases where caches are intentionally stolen or destroyed, but I most times it's something innocent.

[+justintim1999]

I've seen several situations where land owners/managers have them removed because they were placed without permission.

 

I had one situation where a new cacher thought they were suppose to pick up the cache and move it to another location (like a travel bug). They actually put it back about a day later when they realized their mistake.

 

Most of the time it's just people who don't understand the game or think it would be cool to ruin someone else's fun.

Edited August 5, 2016 by justintim1999

[+cerberus1]

I've seen several situations where land owners/managers have them removed because they were placed without permission.

 

We ask for permission, somtimes taking a couple meetings to make everybody happy.

Happened a few times (and one park kinda blamed us) when others seeing a cache there, hid 'em without permission, assuming it was okay "because one's there now...".

We apologized to the land owner and archived 'em.

 

I had one situation where a new cacher thought they were suppose to pick up the cache and move it to another location (like a travel bug). They actually put it back about a day later when they realized their mistake.

 

When the free muggle app first came out, we lost quite a few ammo cans to that belief.

Lost around a dozen since that free app's been out, but of the ones "rehidden", we've retrieved most, with the GC sticker and original log still there.

Sheesh...

 

Now that most left are higher terrain hides, we haven't experienced those issues as much.

[+Mikos88]

I can confirm on the last post; one of my caches was in a rarely visited place and hidden pretty good. And then it disappeared, so I replaced it. 2 months later, I received an e-mail from a cacher that had spoken to a newbie. He didn't completely understand and took the cache with him. So we made the appointment that the mailing cacher retrieved the cache from the newbie and he placed it back at the original location. After that I received some logs "Hey, there's TWO caches here!"

[+NYPaddleCacher]

For caches hidden in public areas, including business parking lots, I would additionally observe that maintenance and security staff are frequent causes of "muggles" who remove caches. (I wouldn't call it stealing, especially if the cache is hidden without permission.) If you're on a landscaping crew that's cleaning up a hedge row at the edge of the business parking lot, and there's a pill bottle at the base of a shrub, it gets scooped up just like the discarded soda cans, plastic bags and food wrappers. If you're a security guard who observes a carload of people drive straight to an empty corner of the parking lot, spend 2 minutes at a lamp post or guardrail, and then speed off, you might investigate and discover a magnetic hide-a-key that you then remove.

 

Even if permission is granted by a business owner, store manager, city parks department or other responsible official, that permission is no good if it isn't communicated to the guy with the leaf blower and trash bag, the guy with the two-way radio and security badge, and the stockroom employee taking a cigarette break behind the store.

 

That happened to me once, with a cache I hid with permission, magneted under a drinking fountain in a town square. When plumbers fixed the drinking fountain, the cache disappeared.

 

This. I would add that any cache hidden in a public area is at risk simply because the area *is* open to the public. A cache near a business is a cache near a place where the general public will park to use that business. Any one of them might consider a group of people getting out of a car, spending a couple of minutes near a lamp post before driving off to be suspicious.

 

I accidentally muggled a cache once. After searching for awhile I saw a pen laying on the ground and CITOd it (I put it in my cache bag for reuse). As I was walking back I saw what appeared to be some bear scat, and took a picture of it, and placed the pen next to it show show the scale. After I got home I thought about it and checked the pen. Sure enough, there was a log sheet inside. I contacted the owner, then went out the next day to replace cache. Turn out a pen is a really bad container when exposed to the outdoors. After one rain the next finder indicated that the couldn't get the wet log out of the pen and it was archived a short time later.