Now that the sun is back, life is good and the birds are singing, etc.
Just the ring of the door bell is disturbing and a Person in Dark is outside telling me to come along as he wants to place a geocache.
I knew frompast experiences that there is no point to object to this kind of invitation.
He explained me that they have observed geocachers for a while nowand found out that they often do the treasure hunting with an animal coming with them. So our alien "friends"want to focus their investigation on our pets now.
As we do not have pets at home, I could not explain him the relationship between pets and geocachers (besides maybe that a pet might help in sniffing out a cache).
In any case, he was not interested in my explanations.
He had taken Metro Line 5 (he mumbled something about artificial inflation of numbers) in the direction to Hermann-Debroux and had taken up his artefact monitoring exercise
from the Metro Station Beaulieu (just following the path established at Man in Dark). When we arrived at WP3 – the wooden platform in the park - we stopped and I explained him that this area is very often frequented by humans to walk their pets. So this would be a nice place for monitoring and observing them.
He quickly looked around and told me that indeed this place fulfilled many requirements for placing a cache. So I asked him where he wanted to hide his cache container. He looked at me like how I could dare to ask such a stupid question.
He then kindly answered: "On the island over there – where else?"
I told him that it is rather uncommon for pets (other then ducks or seacats;-) to get on that island.
He replied that in the past months placing geocaches on remote islands was very common in Brussels and its surroundings.
I told him that one can find such caches only in summer with a boat (and still had a big chance to fall into the muddy water) or do it in winter and walk over ice (with the risk of falling into the same muddy water and getting an additional cold). It is now Easter time and not even the Easter bunny would hide his eggs on the island over there.
Then I saw a wicked simile cross his face!
I had seen this expression before and the picture below came immediately to my mind:
Can you imagine the Easter Bunny being high-jacked by a Man in Dark?
To distract him I asked him how he thinks that geocachers would get onto this island – I called it Easter Island (you will agree that this was certainly a clever move).
He was thinking for a moment and then said that the idea of invisible standing on the platform (or sitting on the nearby bench while recharging the batteries from the little green charging box) and watching humans with their pets jumping (or trying to jump) over to the island was very appealing – especially when they would realise that the way back was even more difficult …
But he did not want to mix the Easter Island with this one here. After all, one of their artists had been working there for some time and his stone carving works are now considered art nouveau …
So we agreed that this place was not suitable for a cache after all.
He was also very proud of his cache container (a sub-micro one) that nicely relates to pets too (do alien pets take pills?).
So we continued to the left following the little flow of water until we arrived at the next bridge. He counted the number of supports on both sides of the bridge and entered this value P into his "PDA" (I had instantly covered my eyes when he had reached for it). He was just shaking his head stating again that they were after pets this time (he did NOT say, "and not after you").
It seems his PDA gave him a final location and we went there to place the container. We arrived there following the GR as long as possible and indeed many humans are walking their animals in this area.
The cache location though seems to be a bit "lost".
After he turned around to head back to the Metro I quickly installed a tiny reflecting device very close to where the container is hidden (just in case somebody wants to get there at night).
This concludes my report from yet another encounter with a Man in Dark.
Oh sorry, I nearly forgot to tell: There was this little dark poodle following us all the time … (e.g. like in J. W. Goethe, Faust, Part I?).