Muggling the Muggles

For those who just read this blog or stumble upon it without knowing the world of geocaching, a "Muggle" is a person unaware of geocaching. A cache "getting muggled" means that a non-geocacher stumbled across the cache and took/destroyed it.

Getting muggled stinks.

While our family still has less than 100 finds at this point, we've got 29 caches placed which is, from what I'm told, not a small number.

We treat these caches well and take care that they're stocked, routinely checked, maintained, fresh logbooks in them... I navigate by them as I drive around the island. They are a little bit of our family as we put effort into the creation and emplacement of each.

I have a cache I'm stumped on replacing. I've put out "Lighthouse Cache" three times now and the final stage keeps getting muggled. I've got to devise another way of hiding it above and beyond my normal trickery. "Have a Ball at the Beach #1" has been muggled and replaced... (That was the golfball cache I demonstrated earlier in this blog. I placed it in an ammo can filled to the brim with golfballs and no explanation. I loved the notes of joyful confusion I got from that one.)

Well tonight, after withdrawing a cache which I unknowing placed too close to a hidden stage of a multi-cache, I stopped by "Goin' to the Chapel". No real reason, I was just there and I figured I'd check on it.

It wasn't there!!!

Now, in fairness, someone might have just replaced it in a different spot near the original hide, but I couldn't spend the search time at that moment and I had to archive (temporarily deactivate) the cache until I can find or replace the cache.

It is hard to express how absolutely frustrating it is to have this happen.

I'll keep putting them out there. I'll keep taking care of them. I'll try to make sure I'm a little more cautious when I search so I don't cause the same frustrations to another cache owner.

If you should find yourself out there looking for a cache and see The Muggle Family, wave and say "Hi." If you see any other muggles, please use caution in your caching.