Be vewwy vewwy quiet!

Today was a first for me, I spotted a likely container while out grocery shopping and did my cache page, container modifications, placed it and submitted to geocaching.com. All in one day! Quite a feat for a procrastinator who is sitting on dozens of containers.

The container I had found was a soap bubble solution and wand in a carrot shaped container. Immediately the thought flashed through my mind that a second cache was needed in my Garden Series, the first was a lonely little petunia in an onion cache. This one would be less pungent, but a bit trickier to make.

The wand was quite long on this and a perfect place to wind a log around and the round end would make a good handle to help rewind the log. The body of the carrot had some wide shoulders to it so I was concerned that the log would unwind and not come out very well or would get torn up when people pulled it out. The solution I came up with to address this was to have a sleeve slide over the log to contain it and slide back out of the way for people to sign it. The wand fit into a socket in the cap so it was easy to pull that out and start looking for something to make the sleeve with. What I found was a clear round tube of body wash we had brought home from some hotel stay. It just fit into the neck of the carrot container so I was in luck.

The first thing to be done, after writing up something for the cache page, was to determine how wide the log could be and still allow the sleeve to both cover it and pull back far enough to to allow unrolling and signing. Once that was figured out, the sleeve was cut to length with a razor knife and the cut edges smoothed. Choosing a bit big enough to allow a ridge at the cap end of the wand to go through, the flat end of the sleeve was centered up and drilled. One of the circles on the wand was cut off and it was ready to assemble.

The log was cut from a sheet of ruled paper and paper first aid tape (so it could be written on) was used to connect two pieces of paper and to tape those to the wand. Rolling it up tightly several times, the paper log developed 'memory' and stayed rolled relatively tight, tight enough to fit easily within the sleeve. The sleeve is slipped over the cap end of the wand and then the wand is glued into place in the cap.

Now most would stop here, but there was more I needed to make the container fit what I had written for the cache page. The title is a quote from Elmer Fudd who was always hunting the “Wascally Wabbit” and I figured this time Elmer would try to trap Bugs Bunny using the carrot as bait. Disabling the trap, I tied some nylon cord to the trigger area and then to the neck of the carrot and added glue to make sure the knots didn't slip off . We have the trap and we have the bait and now Elmer just has to wait.

Shhhhhh!

I'm twying to twap the wascally wabbit what's been eating up my gawden!

Be

Vewwy Vewwy

Quiet

and

Be caweful not to twip the twap.

Please wehide as found.

Th-th- th-at's all folks!

Originally published 3/29/2011 in It's Not About The Numbers 

By catsnfish

A couple of empty-nesters who caught the caching bug not realizing it was incurable. So if we’re found in the woods waltzing with Garmins, lifting lampskirts while tying our shoe or looking for “gum” underneath benches, be sure to stay away... it’s contagious and the only temporary relief can be found in finding bison’s, ammo’s, nano’s, or passing coins and spreading travel bugs!

Publisher's Note: Catsnfish write the periodic column The Adventures of Catsnfish. Subscribe (free) to The Online Geocacher to get an email alert when a new article is published.

Comments(2):

1. What's up Doc?

   Very nicely done. As someone who has only been caching for five months now, it is great to learn about interesting containers. Gives me some ideals of what to look out for.

   Saturday, May 14, 2011 Debra

2. Very inventive!

   Friday, November 04, 2011 Rhonda