The Muryans' Silver Mystery Cache

 This cache is dedicated to, "One Bad Ant". Her geocaching success (over 9,000) and a penchant for Peanut Butter Jar caches has long been a mystery to many.

 This cache is NOT at the posted coordinates!

Robert Hunt, who collected Cornish folktales in the mid to late 1800s, stated that there were five varieties of faerie in Cornwall:

  1. The Small People,
 2. The Spriggans,
 3. Piskies, or Pigseys,
 4. The Buccas, Bockles, or Knockers,
 5. The Browneys.

In Cornwall, the peasantry used to call "The Small People", "Muryans", the Cornish word for "Ant". One of the many explanations is that the Little People had the power to shape-shift.  However; when they returned to their normal form, they are somewhat smaller than before and eventually become the size of ants before disappearing altogether. A traditional belief is that if you place a piece of tin in a bank of Muryans at a certain age of the moon, it will be turned into silver.

Now I got to thinking ... Wouldn't it be something to set a trap for an ant, follow it back to its nest, place a bit of tin in the ant-hill, and be a bit better off for the adventure?

So; I set about designing a trap for an ant, a certain very "special" ant. And this is how I went about it...

Now, I thought, what could I use for a cache container that might attract an ant?

So; I started out by doing a wee bit of research. Nobody was more surprised than I to find that many, if not most, commercial ant-traps contain peanuts in one form or another. Apparently;  the food preferences of ants are often seasonal. When the queen is actively laying eggs, worker ants typically gather protein- based foods for the queen (Peanut Butter is a great example). At other times they may ignore protein foods completely and restrict their foraging to sugars and greases.

Hmmm... Ants ... Peanut Butter ... That gave me an idea...

I'd make my trap out of a Peanut Butter Jar!!!

Now just how how could I remember the coordinates of my ant-trap and also make sure no-one else got the silver first?

Thinking myself exceedingly crafty, I wrote the coordinates in the following secret cipher:
(At the time I thought it was a nice easy one...)

Alas! the years have given me a memory like a sieve. In fact; I've quite forgotten where to begin. So; I'm going to need your help.

Please solve the cipher to find my ant-trap. If you can get the ant to share her secret, I'll gladly share the Faerie Silver!

Congratulations to "green ducks" for her First-To-Find!