Close Encounters of the Rodent Kind

 Maggi went to New Jersey last week for her high school class reunion, and I received a cryptic e-mail hours after her latest projected arrival date: "Here safe. Tell you about the car later." Uh-oh. This was like the old joke about the Jewish mother's telegram home: "Start worrying. Second telegram follows." The explanation, in a second e-mail sent a day of fretting later, said she'd had to stop at an auto parts store and replace the air filter. The whole story came out nearly a week later.

The car had been gasping, sometimes stalling.  It turns out this was due to a clogged air filter, and that came about because of rodent occupation of the filter compartment. Among other things, the predictable dessicated nuts and nesting materials, there was an unexpected treasure in that air filter: the critter had discovered Maggi's stash of Hershey's kisses in the car, unwrapped them, and transferred them to its hiding place. Steal her chocolate? "This means war!" At least that explains why the air filter needed to be replaced, not just cleaned:  the chocolate had melted in the heat of the engine compartment, coating the filter. Car engines are not designed to run with chocolate-dipped air filters. This is why the engine was gasping: It was running on too rich an air mixture.

She was not the only one with rodent encounters. Three mornings ago I staggered out of the bedroom, and when I got to the part of my morning routine where I opened the pantry to get tea, a mouse which had been perched atop the pantry door was flung off, hitting me in the head, scrabbling for purchase on my face, then dropping to the floor and scampering under the breakfront. THAT woke me up, to be sure. And anyone else within a quarter-mile, who might have heard the scream. I am not the sort of female who shrieks at the sight of mice, but when one lays an aerial ambush before I am barely awake, I think I can be excused my quite audible reaction.

I have been lecturing the cats on their household responsibilities ever since.

Cache On Demand

I’m not as bad as I used to be obsessing about each new hobby to the exclusion of all else, then dropping it in favor of a new one, and seldom returning to it. Part of this improvement is financial; But I like to think a lot of it is accumulated wisdom. I’m more discerning about what activities I try, and do indeed just try them at first, not diving into them head-first and accumulating every possible bit of related equipment. Of course, most of my new hobby ventures involve the outdoors.

It took me awhile to get into geocaching. It’s not expensive to start doing it, but GPS technology was brand-new to me. The bottom-of-the-line Garmin I bought with a gift card proved I have no intuition at all about this particular branch of geek-ness. Eight months after getting it, I attended a learn-to-geocache event at the local State Park, had some of the odder features of the devices demonstrated, found all eleven waypoints on the Park geo-trail, and was hooked.

Within the month I had printed out (very ineptly, as the pages ended up in random order and orientation) the User Manual for my device from Garmin’s website, had successfully gotten it to locate satellites, waymarked my house, and found my way back there from my own mailbox a quarter-mile away. I was ready to find my very first cache! The first caching website I tried (through the Garmin site) proved pretty much moribund. I scrounged through my business card file for the card I’d gotten from the cachers at a local outdoor show, which guided me to geocaching.com (duh!).  I created my own free account and found a half-dozen caches were hidden within ten miles of my house! The site proved user-friendly even to this user, I downloaded the lot into my GPS, and was off!

I didn’t know enough to read, let alone print or save, the cache descriptions. My method was simple: Drive to a parking spot within 500 feet or so of a cache, walk to it following the arrow, then use my eyes. Wonder of wonders, the first one I tried, I found. I went 2 for 4 that day, learning rapidly. I found I still need maps; From a distance of 5 miles the roads that seem to go in the right direction don’t necessarily do so. I discovered that the cache may not be where my GPS says “0 feet.” I learned to bring my own writing utensil. I logged my first finds on my Geocaching.com account. I looked up my two failures and discovered how useful the cache descriptions are.

That was a little over six months ago, and I have now logged 170 finds in 9 states. I’ve attended three local events, including CITO, launched my first trackables, and earned my first geocoins. I’m now contemplating the adventure of hiding my first cache.

What is the allure of this activity? For one thing, it combines technology with the outdoors, satisfying my “nerd gene” while allowing me to hike, learn, and observe nature. The fact that I dry-fly fish for trout proves that I love solving puzzles, and this also allows me to do that. I’ve incidentally found a lot more fishing spots by finding caches, as well as many places that are just neat in their own right. The inner child’s fascination with treasure-hunting and a love of knowing secrets and keeping them is really in play (in all senses of the word) here. It tickles me to know that thousands of people drive past these spots daily, unaware of their existence, but I do… along with the select members of my “secret society.” My lifelong love of Sherlock Holmes comes out in my keenness on the hunt. I park the car, and am out like a hound on the scent, eyes glued to the GPS arrow, totally focused on the find. (And almost always forgetting the cardinal rule: Waypoint the car so you don’t get lost coming back.) Once at “ground zero,” I cast about, looking high and low, using every sense, trying to think like the cache hider did, persistent as that hound intoxicated with the strong scent of a covey of quail. The “aha” moment is great, but it’s the process leading up to it I savor. I have recently begun seeking out caches that are more challenging, not just mentally, but physically as well, requiring more hiking over rougher terrain. I truly love puzzle caches, that must be solved by logic and instinct.

Most of all, and I hate to admit this, I am endlessly fascinated by how easy it is to find unknown objects hidden by complete strangers in unfamiliar territory, when I am unable to find my iPod that I put down just a few minutes earlier somewhere in my house. Every day I wander from room to room several times daily searching for whatever item I put down, or, worse yet, in a “safe place,” meaning the nearest black hole. Often I forget what I was searching for in the process and wander further trying to stimulate the memory of why I am wandering. The fact that I can and do find geocaches comforts me when I’m frustrated at my daily absent-mindedness. Perhaps someday I’ll figure out how to overcome my memory deficiency using GPS technology. Meantime, I’ll just keep reassuring myself that I can find other peoples’ stuff, ineptly but surely.