Catsnfish is a columnist for The Online Geocacher. He lives in Omaha NE but was in Scottsboro AL on business so we met to find a few caches in that area.

We met at his hotel after work at 6 p.m. planning for a fairly normal night-caching trip around Scottsboro. We soon enough had found the local caches, including Acorn... a cache I won't soon forget. There I saw something in the eaves of a building that I thought might be the cache, reached up and grabbed it... it started throbbing in my hand, I opened my fist (quickly!) whereupon one very perturbed bat flew out of my hand!

After that it turned into a 453 mile cache odyssey through Huntsville.

But the best part was while coming home... watching The Great Chicken Caper.

I was tired so I pulled in back of a truck stop for some sleep. About 3 a.m. a woman's laughter woke me up. She and her fellow had cut the tie-down straps off of the back end of a flatbed tractor-trailer loaded with chickens and were stealing chickens off the trailer right in front of me!

I used my GPS to see what county I was in and called the law, then sat there and watched these dufuses try to get the chickens off the trailer. I thought the glare of my laptop and cell phone light would clue them in that someone was watching from not 30' away, but they were focused on thieving chickens and never had a clue.

Chickens are hauled in wire crates about 24" square, and aren't light. The fellow was unstacking them and tossing them down to his gal.

Chickens crap in their cage, and chickens on the top level crap on the chickens below (there may be a life truism in that) so every time she caught one she got showered in chicken manure!

I never saw what they were driving, if anything, they were just stacking them on the ground, so I have no clue what they were going to haul all those chickens off in... they may have been preparing to lug them off for a chicken dinner back in the woods. Or maybe they were looking for the one with the golden egg.

All this time the truck driver was asleep in his cab.

The best part was when they saw the headlights of the approaching police car... he jumped off of the truck, leaving a stack of caged chickens teetering, which promptly fell over and clobbered both of them. I lit them up with my headlights when the cops pulled in. He was on the ground amid a pile of chickens when the cops arrived.

I can only surmise that there was alcohol involved in their planning!

Oh man I love the things I see while geocaching!

By TheAlabamaRambler

TheAlabamaRambler is Ed Manley, husband to GeoRose (Teresa), father of five wonderful humans, grandfather of two more, and an avid geocacher.

Now retired after a decade in the US Navy followed by 28 years of owning and operating Knowledge Management Systems, an IT consultancy specializing in Workflow Analysis and Business Process Improvement, Ed now has the time to pursue his hobbies: Fishing, Geocaching and Ham Radio... the order of importance changes daily!

He is also W4AGA, an Extra-class Amateur Radio Operator with a passion for serving the public through volunteer disaster-relief preparedness and response. Active as a Communicator and Disaster Relief Chaplain in the Southern Baptist Convention Disaster Relief, American Red Cross (Shelter Manager and ARCHIE Team Lead), the Salvation Army Team Emergency Relief Network (SATERN), Amateur Radio Emergency Service (ARES AEC - Jefferson County Assistant Emergency Coordinator and OES - Operational Emergency Station) and Assisatant Director of the Zamora Shriners Ham Unit, he can be found on HF daily on 3.965 and on VHF on the Birmingham Amateur Radio Club (BARC) repeater on 146.88.

If you have any interest whatsoever in serving and giving back to your community, saving lives and taking part in the wonderful community of amateur radio please visit http://w4aga.com to learn about the many volunteer opportunities.

Ed is the Editor-In-Chief (sounds high-fallutin, don't it?) of the free online geocaching e-zine The Online Geocacher. He can be contacted via email at mailto:TheAlabamaRambler@gmail.com or by phone at 205-914-6814 from 7 a.m. to Midnight CDT.

73 de W4AGA