Mystery of the Missing Mio

Late this morning we had a horrible sinking feeling as it dawned on us that one of the TeamWolfie members had “misplaced” our Mio in-car GPS navigator, somewhere, sometime, yesterday during our busy Saturday of caching.

After searching everywhere – in the car, in the backpack, in our pockets, we just had to accept the fact that we might have left it somewhere at one of the cache locations – so TeamWolfie returned to do some sniffing around, in the unlikely chance the Mio would still be there.

At this stage we’d pretty much accepted the Mio was lost, and never to be seen again – and already started planning it’s replacement. But not to be deterred we returned to Creek Shrub to try to retrace our exact steps as much as possible…  what were the chances?  Considering it was such a busy Sunday lunchtime, in a popular location full of muggles, we considered the chances of the Mio still being there pretty slim.

Remaining optimistic we approached the Creek Shrub cache site – the last place where we believe we may have left it – and sure enough, there it was, resting peacefully in the wet grass!  How lucky.  Thankfully, this particular cache is a little “removed” from heavy pedestrian traffic which tends to stick to the main pathways, and there had been no rain overnight.

The Mio was a little damp from the dew, but besides that (and a “couple” of ants) it seemed to be in excellent shape. Oh, and the battery was flat – of course.

We returned to the car, eager to plug the Mio in and see if it would power up after it’s night out under the stars – sure enough, it powered up fine. Good as new. Then another ant crawled out of the SD memory card slot.

“Funny,” we thought, “be funny if a heap of ants set up a nest in there…” said TeamWolfie member Guy.

Within a minute another two ants ran out the memory card slot.  It was starting to look like a few ants had indeed set up home in there.

As we headed back to home-based, another ant made it’s escape from the Mio’s memory card slot. This is now getting ridiculous, we thought.  So Guy gives the unit a gentle upside-down tap on the palm of his hand, and out falls about 10 ants, and some tiny white eggs.

It seems the ants had, indeed, set up a nest inside the Mio! The remaining trip home in the car was spent tap tap tapping the Mio and trying to get the ants out.  They just kept coming and coming and coming. I mean, how many more could there be?  It was only there for 24 hours!

We get home – tap tap tap some more over the kitchen sink – ants, and eggs, keep coming out of the Mio. There was definitely something in that GPS device they really loved.  Surely that’s all there is…. right?

Wrong.

So we leave the Mio in a (dry) sink while we watch a DVD…   come back and check – to find no fewer than about 100 ants crawling around in the sink.  My God!   How many ants can you fit into these things?

Tap tap tap – another 10 ants fall out.  Tap tap… MORE ants fall out.  I mean… this is seriously bad – these pesky little ants really had set up a serious full scale nest inside the Mio.

For the next 5 HOURS we intermittently tapped the Mio and sure enough, more and more ants would fall out of it. Fewer and fewer, and eventually we’re now at the point where we think we have most of them.

Mio - still working, but Ant-Ridden

The Mio is now in quarantine (a zip-lock plastic bag). We dare not leave it overnight – who knows what else is waiting to crawl out of it?

Ancient Artifacts

Caching isn’t all fun and games. It can be dangerous, muddy, dirty, and … bloody.

It started when we thought we’d seek out the Ancient Artifacts cache in Rumbalara Reserve.  It was all going pretty smoothly – sure it was a long walk down a steep pathway and lots of stairs into a somewhat wet and boggy lush valley.

We found what we considered to be the “artifacts”, but no cache. It was frustrating. We’d just had two successful finds – surely this one would not beat us. Well, after about 45 mins of searching, and turning over stones and rocks – we came up with nothing.

It was a long walk back to the car. Along the way Guy noticed two leaches literally squirming their way through the fabric of his runners – making a quick path to his feet for a feed of blood. We were able to get them out of his shoes in time, but were amazed at their tenacity and strength.

I was wearing sturdy boots, so I figured I was safe – and surely I would notice if I had any leaches drinking my succulent blood.  So… we left, went and got some lunch, came back home – and I kicked off my boots. After about 10 minutes of sitting around in the lounge room I noticed something running down my leg – it was blood!

They got me!  I went to the bathroom to discover both my legs were bleeeding. It was a real mess. We located a leach in the dirty washing – it had crawled out of my sock.  My socks were also blood stained.

So let this be a warning for others seeking to find Gosford’s Ancient Artefacts cache!