Pet Caches

Blending caches in with the environment can be tricky and there are a lot of ways to do so.  While camouflage can be very basic, to truly get it just right takes practice.  But there is another fun way to do camouflage that we will look at today, along with several examples of this method.  Because of the various methods used, it will be hard to provide a materials list that covers every possible method.  So we will try to highlight what will be needed for each of the provided examples so you can get an idea about how to approach the method.  And what is the method...

ANIMALS!

Yep, I said animals.  So what exactly does that mean?  Those of you who have found a lot of caches may have seen a cache built like this before.  It a geocache built to look like an animal.  In some cases, the animal part is a prop that has been turned into a geocache.  Other times, it is a geocache that is attached to some kind of animal prop.  And in some cases, the animal actually hides the container.  We will look at one of each of these methods.

MATERIALS
One hard part about the methods we will be looking at is finding the right prop for the design.  There are two easy places to find these items, though they aren't the only locations.  One is a Garden Center.  Many stores that cater to landscaping and gardening will often have some animal related props.  Another location would be Halloween stores.  While these are usually only found in early Fall, with a little bit of looking you can sometimes find stores that sell Halloween related goods year-round. 

ANIMAL IS THE GEOCACHE

Our first example is an animal that has been turned into a geocache.  In this example, the animal is typically a larger prop that is hollow in some form.  Is this always the case...definitely not.  I've seen examples of bison tubes made to look like insects.  But for this post, we will focus on a larger version.  For this example, you will need a few items:

• A fake cat
• Logsheet
• Weather resistant glue
• PVC Plug and respectively sized threaded PVC adaptor

For the PVC Plug and adaptor, you can commonly find something called a PVC Cleanout W/Plug.  This would fit perfectly.  You just need to find a size appropriate for your design.  First, we see the cache itself, held by one of my caching friends:

You can see the cat, along with the black PVC fitting attached to it's belly.  A hole was cut into the belly, cut to the diameter of the bottom of the PVC Cleanout. The cleanout is then glued to the cat.  The PVC Plug then can screw into the cleanout to create a water-tight seal (provided you've properly glued the cat to the PVC).  In this photo, you might also notice a small metal loop in front of the PVC plug.  This loop was used to attach the cat to a tree, as seen here:

To attach this the way it is shown, the person who hid this would have had to drill a small hole into the tree, then take a hook screw a bit larger than the hole and screw that into the tree as well.  This would then provide the hook for the loop you see in the above photo, thereby attaching the cat to the tree as shown.

While this design is pretty cool when you see it in person, this did require putting a screw into a tree, which could cause damage to the tree.  If you like how this is setup (and it was pretty cool when I saw it), I would encourage you to find a location that doesn't require drilling into a tree.  I have seen reviewers archive caches that do this and they are right to do so.  It may not seem like much, but this can cause damage.

As you can see in this image, the design does create an interesting atmosphere for a cache, especially on Halloween. I know I laughed pretty hard upon finding this because my first thought was that we had actually found a cat.  Imagine the logs you would receive with a cache like this.

ANIMALS ATTACHED TO THE GEOCACHE

The next type of animal cache involves attaching animals to a geocache.  One of the first examples of this that I ran into involved a fake rat attached to a 35mm film canister, hidden under a log.  I happened to go after it at night, which made the cache even more fun to find.  These types of hides are rather simple and require nothing more than a geocache and some kind of fake animal to attach to the outside.  Spiders, snakes, and rats are the most common fake animals you'll see used, but insects often work wonderfully as well.

When building a cache like this using a smaller cache size, you typically need nothing more than the geocache itself, the animal to attach, and a method for attaching it.  Weather resistant glue is the most commonly used method.  For larger caches, like ammo cans, some geocachers will use items like snakes and large spiders and just rest them on top of the cache.

Here is an example of a micro attached to an insect.  The photo was taken by rhondapalooza.

ANIMALS HIDING GEOCACHES

The last example involves using an animal to hide the geocache.  Now the above example of the cat might seem like it fits here to but there is a difference.  With the cat, the cat was turned into the geocache.  The PVC parts merely provided an easy method to open and close the container, but the cat's body was the geocache itself.  For this last method, the fake animal isn't the geocache itself, it's merely the camouflage designed to hide the geocache.  Here, let's see an example of this:

In this example, the bird is the camo.  If you look closely, you can see the red, rounded edge of the geocache sticking out the back end of the bird.  It is hard to tell from this view, but the bird is actually carved from a lightweight wood, carefully painted to look like a real bird.  Using a drill, a hole was created for the bison tube.  A perch was created and tied to the tree on which the bird is attached.  Look carefully and you can see a triangular piece on the back end of the perch which helps prevent the bison tube from falling out accidentally.  To retrieve this cache, the bird rotated forward just a bit.  This was achieved by making the feet loop around the perch, but with a little bit of looseness to allow the rotation.  Rotate the bird forward, pull out the bison tube, and sign the logsheet.

Birds are definitely the most commonly used animal for this method, at least from what I've experienced.  Here is another example of a bird geocache (which happens to be an exact replica to two bird caches I have seen) as taken by Wrapped In Piano Strings, who we should welcome to the geocaching world as this is a picture of their very first find:

Once, I saw a large GINORMOUS Bison using this method up in St. Joseph, MO.  Always good for a laugh when taking someone to find it.

So there you have it.  Three ways to turn a simple geocache into a creative geocache using animals.  Have you seen an example of this before?  Post a GC code in the comments.

TripCyclone

P.S. I am waiting for permission from a few people to display their photos on the site.  I will update the post with photos as permissions arrive.  For now, I've merely linked to the photos I am awaiting permission from.

Halloween Series - The event

Some people enjoy planning events.  For some, it's a chore.  Almost everyone loves attending them.  What you plan will make all the difference.

Okay, so a little bit of this post will be based on an event I held only two days ago, but with some encouragement from the kind words I've received about it, I felt that it wouldn't hurt to talk about creativity in event planning.  We could focus on events in general, and maybe in the future we will.  For now, lets look at some ideas for planning a Halloween event.

Hold your event at night.  This makes it a bit harder for the kids, but it makes the atmosphere ten times better for caching.  Speaking of caching...

Haunted caches.  If you can find a location with room to plant some caches, try to do haunted caches.  You can use the rat and skull caches from the previous two posts, or come up with something else.  Fake graves, ghosts in the trees, fake snakes and spider caches will provide those little EEKS escaping from geocacher's mouths.  If the area you are holding the event has some wooded trails, definitely plan on using them.  Put some Halloween related swag inside for good measure.

And speaking of wooded trails, if you're up for the task, try to build a night cache for the event.  Make it a haunted night cache to boot.  Night caches are fun in groups, even more fun in the atmosphere of Halloween.

It is Halloween so plan on people wanting to dress up.  Plan for this by holding a costume contest.  This will encourage some people to put more effort into their costumes and you'll see some interesting ones.  You may end up showing up at the event only to have a silent, heavy breathing, mad doctor staring you down as you try to guess whose inside.  And don't forget the kids.  Make it more fair and have a kids category and an adults category (don't forget prizes for both).

Mentioning kids reminded me something about caches.  If you are planning caches, it couldn't hurt to plan some kiddie caches.  Direct from the mind of redsoxfan65, who helped me with my event, plant some temporary caches for kids.  Fill them with Halloween swag that the kids can take so it feels like trick or treating.  Then, nearby, place a permanent "logger" cache.  When the kids find all of the temporary caches, the logger cache is the place where they can claim their find.

Try to plan for treat bags.  Everyone loves treats on Halloween, and the inner geocaching kid in all of your attendees will enjoy this extra step.  Plan on having more than what you expect to show up.  Chances are you will still run out.

Door prizes.  As with any event, try to have door prizes.  Especially if you hold a costume contest.  The chance to win prizes will get even more people dressed up.

If you can find something else to work into your plans, awesome.  For my event, we held the event at a park that had an observatory.  We worked with them to reserve it for the night and a member of their club came out and gave people views of Jupiter and the Moon through a HUGE telescope after the clouds rolled away.  It ended up being cool finish to the event.

All of this may seem like a lot of work, so ask for volunteers to help.  Put some effort into planning a fun haunted event and you'll have a lot of happy cachers in the end.

If you have other ideas to incorporate into a Halloween event, post some comments so others can plan for next year.

I have one last Halloween post planned and the plans can definitely be used outside of Halloween too - logbook design.  Bet you didn't think about that when planning your caches.  I sure didn't until recently.  All the artistic geocachers out there will love this one.

TripCyclone

Halloween Series - The Skull

Yesterday, we looked at The Rat as a Halloween themed cache.  Today, we are going to look at how to build a Skull Cache.  And this one definitely has some variety to it depending on what you use for the skull.

Required supplies:

• Logbook
• Micro Cache Container
• Fake Skull

Optional supplies:

• Power drill
• Screweye
• Fishing line/rope
  

Let's start with the skull itself.  There are a variety of skull products out there.  Hard plastic, soft plastic, foam, hollow, solid, and everything in between.  This will probably be the most important decision you make with this design.  What skull you use will define how to build the cache and how to hide it.  If you use hollow, all you need to do is open it up to hide the cache.  If you use a solid skull, you will have to drill.  That's where the power drill will come in.  If you use foam, you better be prepared to buy a lot of spares as the weather will ruin it.  Better yet, just stay away from foam.

Let's look at the container.  Again, a matchstick container works best but a 35mm can be used as well, just like with the rat cache.

Now for the hide.  The skull can provide some interesting ways to get creative with the hide itself.  You can use some of the common "in the woods" methods such as covering it with brush or finding a hole in a tree.  A more creative way involves hanging from something like a tree. Attach a screweye (for those unfamiliar with that, it's the screw that has the round loop at the top) to the top of the skull and then tie a line to that.  Attach the other end of the line to whatever object you are hanging it from and you now have a hanging skull cache.

In the end, it's a rather basic setup.  The key thing to consider is what kind of skull you want to hide.  That will help define how to build the cache.

TripCyclone

Halloween Series - The Rat

Wow, didn't realize it had been THAT long since my last article.  Well, I've been pretty busy between work and...well work.  But, I thought that as we approach Halloween in five days, I would do a series of quick articles on Halloween themed caches.  Most of these will be short articles and very similar to each other, but with slightly different props.  We'll start with a classic - THE RAT.

Building a rat cache is rather simple.  Here are the needed supplies:

• Rubber rat
• Micro Cache container
• Logsheet

An optional supply would be some sort of adhesive.  That depends on the final design.  In the simplest sense, you will be attaching the container to the rat.  How you attach it will depend on the container used.  35mm film canisters work well, but waterproof matchstick container (easy to find among camping gear in stores) is better.  Mainly because the screw top and O-ring provide a more durable waterproof container (imagine that...a waterproof matchstick container being waterproof!) than a film canister, which can easily get smashed, broken, chewed on or have the lid pop off.

I've seen the attachment go several ways.  If you purchase a rat that is hollow, you can cut a hole on the belly and insert the container inside the rat.  If it isn't hollow, look to see if there is a space between the paws where you can slip the container (this might be where an adhesive would be valuable).  Unless it is a bigger rat, a micro is the best size for a container.

For hiding spots, try to find a good hole at the base of something, be it natural or manmade.  Up in a tree just seems less natural than on the ground.  Most of the time, the rats will be black or brown but I've seen white and gray ones before.  The darker ones will be easier to blend in, and if found in the dark, are more likely to startle someone.  The first time I saw a rat cache, it made me hesitate before reaching for because I was looking at night.

There you have it.  A simple halloween cache.  Next up...the skull cache.

TripCyclone