Current at 11/6/2011 (Online waypoint URL) You have already found this cache! Master Index    Nearest Caches Not So (N)ice by Flotsom and Jetsom (3/1.5) (Archived) N49° 52.363  W97° 14.248 (WGS84) UTM  14U   E 626645  N 5525969 Use waypoint: GC1TDEX Size: Micro    Hidden on 6/7/2009 In Manitoba, Canada Difficulty:     Terrain:                   In the Assiniboine Park Zoo. Please be careful accessing and returning this cache to its location. Dedicated to Debby, Winnipeg’s polar matriarch, who lived the Assiniboine Park Zoo until her passing at the record setting age of 42 years. The Canadian Arctic is home to 60% of the world’s 22,000 polar bears. The bears are wholly dependent on the arctic sea ice habitat for hunting. Climate change is sadly having a dramatic effect on this ice and has become the number one threat to the long-term survival of the polar bear. Sea ice cover has declined by approximately 9% per decade since 1978 and the melt rate seems to be increasing faster than anticipated. This loss of sea ice area and longer ice-free periods (earlier melting) restrict the time the bears can hunt each year. The bears are forced to come ashore before they have developed enough fat reserves to allow them to reproduce successfully and survive the summers when they can’t hunt.

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7/12/2009 by Kabuthunk
This cache actually ended up requiring several attempts to find... but both within the same day, both within the same outing, so in such situations I generally count it as one caching attempt as a whole. My wife had wanted to go for a walk at the zoo today, and I wasn't exactly opposed to the idea of spending the day with my wife, out on a beautiful day, while snagging a few geocaches on the way .

After we had gotten to the zoo, we circled around to the bear area. I noticed that a geocache was like... right beside where we were standing, so after watching the grizzly bear for a while (which seemed to refuse to turn to us so that we could take a picture of anything other than it's furry bum), Laura went to go see if the polar bear was around, or hiding inside of... whatever it's "inside" is. In the meantime, I checked the GPS and decided to wander around and see if I could spot anything that doesn't quite fit, so to speak.

There was quite a number of people at the zoo today (it was a REALLY nice day), so I had to be extremely discrete about it. Thankfully, most of the pedestrian traffic was taking the 'bottom' route, closer to the bears, leaving the 'upper' route fairly empty. The GPS decided to take this opportunity to bounce around a bit, so I ended up wandering back and forth a few times, not being able to come up with anything. Something that seemed out of place (which also happened to fit the hint, which I had to look at later), but I only glanced at it, writing it off as nothing (which it eventually ended up indeed being).

Not feeling inconspicuous enough to spend more time wandering there, I decided to write it off for the time being, and perhaps check back later when we had made our circuit around the zoo. As we were walking away, that was when I checked my palm pilot and saw the hint. So we continued on our trek around the zoo for another several hours, and eventually found ourselves near the entrance again. Taking a minor detour back towards the vicinity of the bears, I went back to that original 'out of place' thing, thinking it WAS indeed the cache, since it fit the hint. Several seconds later, I concluded that it was indeed... nothing. There was less people now, so I circled around a little bit more.

A bit more poking, and a bit more prodding here and there, and I was still coming up empty. I sat back on the bench for a minute to kinda soak in everything, and think of what I could possibly be missing. When I stood up from the bench, about to write off finding this cache a second time for the day, out of the corner of my eye, I caught that "doesn't look quite right" that I had been looking for the entire time . Two seconds later, the cache was in hand, and I showed Laura the awesome camouflage. Quite good looking, but again... just 'off' enough that it didn't quite fit.

One signing of the logbook and a micromail ball later, and the geocache was placed back where I had retrieved it from. Mission accomplished .

Thanks for the excellent geocaching at the zoo. Yet again, another amazingly fun and well-hidden set of caches for us to find on the zoo outings. Although I was only able to go after two of them today, I hope to be able to head back here again this year... preferably prior to the middle of winter when I visited the last year... and find the rest of the set .

Took: Nothing
Left: Logbook entry and micromail ball

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