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He was making his regular rounds mid-morning Friday at one of the nine buildings he maintains for York County Heritage Trust when his eyes homed in on something small dangling from a mounting bracket just off the ground behind one of the building's downspouts. As he crouched down and his eyes focused, he could see a tiny silver vial 2 inches long.
Kunkle thought about this week's terror scare in Boston, where almost-hidden innocent-looking objects had created temporary hysteria during a TV show's guerilla marketing campaign gone wrong. He hesitated. But his curiosity bested him, and he reached out and un- screwed the top of the cryptic vial.
In it was a small, rolled-up sheet of paper. As he unfurled it part way, Kunkle saw a list of code names, about 40 of them, with dates next to each one. The first, "papasnapdragon," was dated "6-22-06," or maybe it was "6-27-06." The ink was smudged. The most recent name, "kitkat59," had been added Monday.
Was this some sort of drug trade record? Prank? Maybe the police would know.
Kunkle went to the York City Police Department and shared his find with them. It was then that Kunkle unfurled the paper the whole way and noticed the writing printed across the top - a Web site. An officer saw it and mentioned something about a "treasure hunt." Convinced there was no wrongdoing, the officer left Kunkle with the
Kunkle left the station, still perplexed. It was time to pull out the big guns to solve this mystery. If anyone would know, he thought, it would be Mike Shanabrook, York's emergency planner. Kunkle called, but no luck. He wasn't in.
Impatient, Kunkle decided to try to crack the case himself, so he logged on to the mysterious Web site printed on the paper.
Within moments, he was relieved, embarrassed and had his answer.
It was a game.
Apparently, people from all over the planet stash similar objects here, there and everywhere for others to find using global positioning satellite devices. The site, www.geocaching.com, was simply a digital home base for people to drop clues of where their treasures were hidden.
No drugs.
No prank.
No terror.
Those who find the objects leave their mark by signing their nicknames on a piece of paper, then put it back.
So now what? If he put it back where he found it, strangers would come onto the property at any hour of any day. And yet, it seemed so innocent.
A colleague of Kunkle's, who was in on the mystery, told him that he should put it back, that people would be looking for it. By midafternoon, Kunkle returned to where it all began and carefully hung the vial back exactly where and as he found it.
And so the vial hangs, waiting to be feared or cherished, depending on who finds it next.
