It started with one little geocache under a park bench.
Billy had just discovered geocaching—a modern-day treasure hunt using GPS—and he was instantly hooked. The thrill of hiding small trinkets in sneaky spots and watching strangers search for them lit a fire in his soul. He named his first cache "Billy's Bolt Box" and waited anxiously for someone to find it.
They did. And they loved it.
Encouraged, Billy hid another. Then another. Then twenty more. Before long, the entire Hastings County was dotted with Billy's caches—under rocks, behind signs, up trees, beneath fake dog poop, even one cleverly hidden in a hollowed-out pineapple he glued to a fencepost.
At first, the local geocaching community cheered. Billy was a legend. People traveled from away just to do the “Billy Blitz,” a 48-cache trail that spelled out his name on the GPS map.
But then... it got out of hand.
Billy stopped asking for permission. He hid caches in flower pots, church steeples, and even once (briefly) inside a taxidermied beaver at the historical society. He filled every nook and cranny. No space was safe. There was a cache in the library’s book drop titled “ShhhCache”. Another in the mayor’s bird feeder: “Feathered Find #73.”
Soon, complaints rolled in.
City maintenance was fed up with geocachers trampling flowerbeds. The mailman tripped over a disguised cache labeled “Letterbox LOL.” And when the town’s water tower had to be evacuated because someone mistook “Billy’s Big Tin Surprise” for something suspicious, enough was enough.
City councils issued a new ordinance: No more than five geocaches per person within a three-kilometre radius. Billy was devastated—but relieved in a way. He hadn’t slept in weeks, constantly refreshing his app, updating coordinates, responding to DNF (“did not find”) messages with cryptic hints like “look higher, but think lower.”
Now, his geocache empire lives on—slightly trimmed, lovingly maintained, and still full of his signature weirdness.
And every now and then, someone still finds Billy’s Bolt Box, smiles, and leaves a tiny note that simply says:
“Thanks, Billy. You made the hunt worth it.”
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