So, Reilly and I decided that yesterday would be a good day for a GeoCache hunt. The premise is simple if you’re unfamiliar – the website lists thousands of locations throughout the world where GeoCache players have hidden containers filled with trinkets and logged the GPS coordinates on the site. You then simply take the coordinates and with your trusty GPS trek through various terrain, typically in places you really really would never have ventured without having been brought there in this way, and try to find the cache. Once you’ve found it, you sign the book, and trade one of the treasures with something that you have brought. It’s treasure hunting for grownups. We typically take coordinates for sites on the way and at the location whenever we’re going on a trip – so Vancouver, for example. It’s an excellent way to get out and about, and see places we wouldn’t otherwise see.

Anyways… so yesterday was a good GeoCache day. We thought we’d like a drive, so we chose one that was a ways out of the city at the Strathcona Wildlife Centre. Now, the Strathcona Wildlife Centre is definitely one of those places that you would have never ended up had it not been for the GeoCache located on site. Someone (likely a committee of people) decided to take this hunk of bush and cut some really wide trails through it, slap a couple signs up restricting motorized vehicles and bicycles, and call it a Wilderness Park. Not long after beginning our trek in the not-so-beautiful Wilderness Park, we realized that the cache was going to be at least 120 metres off the trail and the thick wall of rosebushes and plethora of mosquitoes convinced us that the walk was all we really wanted, and that we could forego the waltz through the actual bush in search of a keychain.

Moving on, we were nearing the end of our walk when the bush next to us exploded with a large Partridge. We both jumped at first, but once realizing it was only a bird were calm for a second. Just a second. My initial thought was that we had scared the bird, and that it was flying away. The bird had another agenda.

First, it took after Reilly. Squawking, arms flapping, and jumping, it chased him down one fork in the trail (with him running full speed). This was one pissed off bird. Realizing that the bird was preoccupied, I walked quickly down the other fork of the trail, towards our car, laughing at the bird still after Reilly. All in the same few seconds, however, the bird gave up her pursuit of Reilly and came after me! Now I was running at full tilt, bird still squawking and flapping its wings hysterically, it caught up in time to make one full scale attack where it jumped, squawking and flapping, and promptly flung itself against my ass. Seeing that I didn’t topple over, as I’m sure it was hoping, it gave up pursuit and Reilly and I were able to escape the tirade of the bird. Talk about excitement.

In retrospect, we’re sure that this bird had probably been protecting a nest a few feet off the trail, and was likely to go through this episode a few times each day as people, possibly also looking for the elusive GeoCache hidden in the rosebushes, wandered by unknowingly.

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