What's the most unusual way your cache was lost?

[+TheVoytekBear]

I got the idea for the topic when my own cache disappeared.

I used a very resistant container which could be only detached when it's unlocked from the inside (you'd have to know the code to open the container itself). After putting it in the field I blocked the said mechanism. I put it on one of the poles which separate the road from the sidewalk on an intersection close to the old town in the city I live in. You'd literally need a decent powertool to detach it (I believe the attaching mechanism is made of hardened steel).

So what happened? Somebody had a car accident and damaged the poles, which had to be replaced. I wonder if the container was ever detached from the pole or just went to the scrap yard with it...

Any of you have any uncommon experiences like this?

[+BCandMsKitty]

 

I sort of lost an ammo box ... kinda ....

I had an ammo box in the hollow of a dead tree. Well, the tree fell .... straight down! It detached about 4 feet above the cache and slid down inside itself burying my ammo box under the end of the rest of the 40 foot high dead tree which was still standing!

You could just see the corner of the box, but there was no way to get at it, and digging for it brought the danger of the tree finishing it's fall.

I put a lock n lock in the rest of the cavity with appropriate changes to the cache page, and continued with the hide.

Fast forward a year and a half .... the tree fell the rest of the way and lo and behold .. there was the ammo box!!! Not even dented!

 

You just can't beat an ammo box for a cache container! 

[+Harry Dolphin]

My major problem in North Jersey seems to be black bears.  There are over 2000 black bears in New Jersey.  Probably close to the highest density.  "Please hide the cache behind the rock, so Bobby Bear doesn't chew on it!"  Unfortunately many geocachers do not read that part of the cache page.  But, that's not an uncommon problem.

[+hzoi]

I just lost a puzzle cache final due to an interstate highway widening project.  Not because they widened the highway to include the area where the cache was --they cleared out trees on the highway side of the fence but had left a strip of trees between the fence and a parallel surface road..  The construction crew just made a small break in the fence and cleared out a couple trees to provide access to the parallel surface street.  They removed one single fence post as a result.  Naturally, it was the one on which I'd hung the cache.

[+J Grouchy]

Can't think of anything unusual...but sometimes timing can be very strange.  

There's a bunch of caches in and around Atlanta that go by the name "Dead Ringer" which takes advantage of all the old abandoned public telephones one finds in various locations.  I sort of played off that a little and made a logic puzzle call "Mr. Ringer's Murder" where one had to figure out the murderer, the weapon, etc. to obtain the coordinates.  The final was located on an abandoned phone that was probably disconnected for at least a decade.  Within a few weeks of publication, the site was bulldozed.  When I moved the final to a new location just down the road - the same kind of hide - THAT phone was torn out within a couple of weeks.  I decided at that point that the whole cache was jinxed and archived it.

Edited August 21, 2017 by J Grouchy

[+geocat_]

Bomb squad blew my cute, little cache up   You can read about it on my replacement cache here http://coord.info/GC77FC6

[+nutlady]

OMG.....geocat...I am sending you a link.....lol.....

[+DocDiTTo]

I had a multicache that used a magnetic "High Voltage" sticker on an electrical box inside a pavilion in a park as one stage.  One day they tore down the pavilion and of course removed the electrical box along with the cache magnet.

A couple weeks later they built a new pavilion and put the same electrical box back in place, with the magnet still attached.

So I guess it wasn't actually lost, just relocated for a while. 

 

[+batrambo]

In Bulgaria a lot of the boxes are gone because of an anticacher (former player), who is mad at Groundspeak...We even have video how this guy destroys a cache, connected with chain to a building...Unfortunately, it seems that Groundspeak can't do much

[+fuzziebear3]

I hid a cache in a park.   The first seeker (the next day) didn't find it.  I went and checked and they had trimmed the tree and my cache with it.

A few weeks later, same park.  I hid a cache for an event (again, the day before).  The first to look for it returned it to me all chewed up by a squirrel.  We quickly replaced it with a different container a little less attractive to squirrels.   The original was a fake (styrofoam) lime.  Who knew that squirrels liked styrofoam or limes?