Mantis TB sighting!

Mantis the TB about to take a swim in Falls Lake, NC.

If you are unfamiliar with GeoCaching you may not know about Travel Bugs. TBs as they are known are special tagged items that travel from one cache to the next. For example, Mantis's tag is TB1CZ9Z.

All have a mission of one sort or another. Like one I recently created called "Pete the Parrot". Pete's mission is to get himself photographed in as many bars as possible (he's a real party animal) via his trek to somewhere in the tropics. Other TBs can bring awareness about our troops, cancer or other causes. Most are just plane fun to find and there are tons of people who love to help transport them on their journey. Did I mention that many TB's travel thousands of miles and have been recorded going around the world?

Mantis here has been hanging from my car visor for a while now. Mostly a TB stays in your possession for a week or two but some are special. I have photographed Mantis in five states (North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Ohio and Michigan). I will be letting the little guy go soon so he can make his way to places unknown but for now he is quite comfortable swinging from his vantage point in my car.

If you want to see where Mantis has been go to http://www.geocache.com/ and click on Trackable Items, put in code TB1CZ9Z and you will see his journey so far.