Wednesday, October 18, 2006

Planting The Body (geocache)

On Wednesday night I dropped my geocache for the upcoming Ottawa geocaching event GAG9. I had a feeling it was going to be a bit tricky to plant it since it was basically a huge duct tape dummy based on my own body proportions, and it was made up to look like a dead body stashed in the woods... So I did what the real wackos and murderers probably do. Waited until midnight to drag this thing in the forest and dispose of it so to speak.

I had the spot all picked out, some little used woods off of the Innes road Eastbound Blackburn bypass.. I loaded the thing in my truck at 11:55pm Wednesday night and off I went! Of course it didn't start off smoothly. I have a new neighbor moving in right across the street and he pulled in late with some U-Haul trailer as I was stuffing the body in my front seat (I waved hello and went right on stuffin' - he pretended not to see me, we'll just keep it that way).

Then on the drive over I did a U-turn to get on the other side of the one-way street and ended up overshooting my entry point! Crap! I continued driving and thought I'd just pull another U-turn up ahead and do it all over again when suddenly the van in front of me jammed on it's brakes - and hit a deer. I stopped. The dead deer really did a job on the van and it's occupants were ok and already dragging bambi to the side of the road, so I went on my way. During that little incident I was reminded that my stupid dome light stays on inside the truck for 30 seconds after I open the door to get out, showing the body in full view to anyone driving by (grrrr)..

So I continued on my merry way, did my U-turn, then did another and was soon parked by the road right at the spot I had marked with my GPS earlier in the week. All I had to do now was wait for a break in traffic so I could open my passenger door, drag the body out and stuff it in the woods.. Traffic was particularly busy at midnight... It seemed like 10 minutes before I saw a break in both directions, but there it was and boom, that fake body was out of the truck and in the treeline in 2 seconds flat! I locked my truck with the remote and started tromping off into the woods with the body on my shoulder and a flashlight in my free hand when flashing red lights caught my eye

A police car with it's cherries on was parked in back of my truck. Now I figured there was NO WAY he could have seen me run into the woods with my body.. He had to be just checking out a truck stopped for no reason by the side of the road.. I was about 20 feet into the treeline and I threw the body to the ground (it was wearing a dark blue coverall, so it was ok, but I was pretty sure my MEC jacket had all kinds of reflective shit on it, so I turned mty light off, got down behind a tree and peeked around. The cop was out of his car, walking over to my truck and playing his flashlight around in the woods where I had just gone in. CRAP! I was thinking that if he came in the woods, I'd give a quick "Hi!" and come out from where I was holding the geocache container and try and leave the fake dead body out of it completely. Just explain to him that I was all alone, planting a plain old geocache, that's all, not trying to hide a body or anything, nope..

Well, he didn't come in the woods, he got right back in his police car and drove off. And then it occurred to me that he may have been responding to the van that hit the deer, thought my truck was the one involved, and maybe the deer had come back to life and ran into the woods to die (they do that sometimes I hear). Man.. I was lucky.. Very lucky.. If he would have come up on my sitting there with that thing in the passenger seat....

So I tramped another 150m into the woods, changed the spot I was gonna put him in after finding a cooler spot, and took a pile of pictures.. I even found a dear skull on the ground nearby and placed it in his lap.. He looked great out there! Hopefully it will creep people out a bit when they find it this Friday... Man, if I'd have gotten my act together I could have hired some teenager to just sit in the coveralls and jump when people came near (maybe next year). How'd you like to take a hike in the woods at night and come across this thing?



1 comment:

Mark said...

LMAO!!!