Weird situation... GC swapped by another GCer? Muggled? Stolen?

[+BethDaddyKaty]

Bit of a weird one.

 

I put out a series of GCs. They're doubled ended ones with collectable stickers so not standard containers.

 

Doing a walk around today I noticed one was missing last online found is 23/9. I assumed it had been muggled, not a high difficulty albeit in quiet area. However, about 3 metres away I then found another GC in smaller container. It had a waterlogged log with a log claiming FTF on 25/9/19.

 

I'm trying to work out what happened. All I can see is

 

There was another GC there that hadn't been recorded, and it was found by chance because mine had gone DNF. Possible, but I did carefully check the area before hiding.

 

or

 

A kind cacher has tried to help by replacing a cache with a new one, without realising it's part of a series.

 

or

 

????????????????????

 

Any thoughts? Seems a very strange situation.

[+colleda]

Yep, all of that.

Re the one you found, were there any other signatures?

[+colleda]

1 minute ago, colleda said:

Yep, all of that.

Re the one you found, were there any other signatures?

Ok, I see by your TD that the soggy log was blank.

[+colleda]

BTW, I would suggest you use a Write Note rather the Owner Maintenance log when saying what you will be doing to fix it. Use the OM log when you actually fix it (as well as an Enabled log).

[+Lynx Humble]

2 hours ago, daddybeth said:

A kind cacher has tried to help by replacing a cache with a new one, without realising it's part of a series.

 

We call those a throwdown and it's not kind cacher that do that. They only want a smiley.

[+hzoi]

Unfortunately, it's entirely possible that someone (or something - animals can muggle caches too) took a shine to the original container and made off with it.  Without more evidence, it's anyone's guess whether that individual left the leaky container behind, or it was a throwdown from the next cacher along.

 

We had a few ammo cans stolen in a series.  The thief was "kind" enough to leave leaky pill bottles in their place, with notes to the effect that geocaching was littering.  They "only" stole the logs from almost all of the other caches (PET preforms/PETlings, small lock and locks, and decon containers).  Since they'd skipped a cache with higher terrain, as well as a nearby puzzle cache with higher difficulty, I surmised they must be a basic member and didn't see the higher rated caches in the app.  So I archived the series and made our other caches PMO.  So far (knock on wood) they have not messed with our other caches, which supports my hypothesis.

Edited September 30, 2019 by hzoi