Doug vs. the interweb

May 20th, 2010 11:44 PM

Perseverance!

Margot and I went out looking for a geocache that was a quarter mile from the pond and stream we go walking at often. I led her and I down a rather treacherous rock pile along the bank of the stream (treacherous in that it was a man-made slide of rocks to preserve the bank, and so each one would move when you stepped on it), based on the assumption that the glowing, pulsing, concentric-circle-emanating sphere represented the target and not the phone we were using as a guide, but after reaching the bottom, cooling my little feets in the water, and proclaiming that it must be on the other side, Margot asked if I was aware of which marker on the screen was which. Now that was a sentence! Also, I was wrong, and so it turned out the cache was in precisely the opposite direction.

Just about back to the top, I noticed a small hopping creature, and as that sets off instincts I've cultivated for years, I followed it, finding a little wood frog. It's been years since I've seen one of them, let alone caught one, so I hastily tried my hand, but was nearly immediately foiled when he leapt between some rocks and into a maze of dead leaves. Being that he looks precisely like a dead leaf himself in coloration, my diggings and searching proved fruitless. Rather than continue sticking my hand into dark, damp crevasses, I gave up and we continued our search for the cache.

We found it in a stump, and wrote our names in the ledger. I lamented in its pages my sorrowful tale of not catching the wood frog, and we left a copy of Nintendogs that my dad had found a while ago and which neither of us had any particular use for. Perhaps some future folks will find pleasure in simulated puppies, who knows?

Walking back, I.. I just had to try again. I carefully retraced my steps, making sure to avoid stepping on leaves, and started poking about where I had last seen the frog. And look: my persistence paid off, as the little dude jumped out of hiding. Where he jumped from, I still don't know. However, what I did know, and what is always the more pertinent of the positional pair, was where he landed. I stalked circularly to a better position, not taking my eyes off the spot, alert to any additional movement. In place, I searched.. leaves, leaves, leaves.. tiny frog leg poking out from a leaf... Caught!

So, we found the cache, and I caught an interesting frog. Then we went home and I made tacos! A rather good evening, by most measures.

Oh, but then I'm leaving off the endcap: as we were walking back to the car, there was a couple in the small parking lot walking over to the trail. I was holding the little frog in my hand, his head and body poking out, as that is the only way to hold a frog if you don't want him to hurt himself struggling. I suddenly got a massive case of sheepishness and kept my eyes downturned as we passed them; I always feel kind of weird walking about with some kind of wild animal in my hands. On the one hand, I feel as if I'd like to share it with everyone, to show it to people and let them know all of the interesting things that live right under our noses. On the other, I'm a stranger with a frog and oh goodness don't think I'm a weirdo oh dear. Rational thought doesn't really come into it; I just don't know how to act sometimes. Anyway!: we passed them, and I heard the lady say to the dude something like, "look, he's caught one too." And then shortly after, as I was putting a little water in a bucket to bring the frog back in, I saw the couple walking along the edge of the pond, appearing to be investigating something on the edge that caught their eye. So, a dude (with a beard) who potentially was there to look for creatures, from the little bit of information I gathered incidentally? And I walked right past them, didn't even give them a Hi How ya doin'? Dangit.