Friday, February 26, 2010

Map of Wednesday's Track

The map of the track from Wednesday is available now, and it covers much more territory than I thought. (It is generated via Salsa, the tracking dog, wearing a GPS collar, or maybe Sam wears a GPS watch -- something like that -- so it's only misprepresentative of the track if Sam forgets to turn it off when the track is over.)


So I think we need to do more than a token amount of outreach in North Springfield. Processing this . . .

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Through Thursday

Well, no real activity Thursday, following the Wednesday sighting and the preparations for Griffy to come through the area. No food at the feeding station with the camera positioned on it, though some food was gone from the one closer to the street.

If all of the Griffy sightings and what we know of his travels from the scent trails followed by tracking dogs (LJT Pet Tracking and Pure Gold Pet Trackers) were all compressed into a shorter time period, we could say that Griffy's pattern is to do loops that are like petals in a daisy. He does seem to loop, some larger and some smaller, but he doesn't do the same loop over and over.  However, don't forget how much time is passing between sightings. We DON'T know Griffy's pattern, and CAN'T determine it unless we start getting more sightings that show us where he is more of the time -- like every day, preferably! All that the sightings we have gotten are telling us is that he survived the snow storms and any other threats to his safety, and he's traveling. They aren't telling us where to go to jump ahead of him and put a trap in his path.

A lot of good outreach has already taken place in all of the areas Griffy has been sighted, but of course no amount is really ever enough. Anyone that can participate this weekend in any type of outreach for Griffy, please send an email or leave a comment (which does send an email). Here's what we're looking for people to do:
 -- post fliers
 -- pass out biz cards
 -- produce supplies of above mentioned fliers & biz cards for pickup by a volunteer
 -- participate in intersection alerts along 236
 -- if you can $pon$or a postcard mailing, we can do a cheaper homegrown version of what's described HERE
 -- anything else you can think of!

As always, we need as many people involved as we can get, and as much as possible, we want to pair people up to work together whenever volunteers are available. Thanks in advance for your help bringing Griffy home!

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

New Sighting - a Few Hours Ago

Not much in the way of details yet, but a sighting was called in this morning and Gail plus two other volunteers responded immediately. They didn't see Griffy, although the sighting was fairly hot, but they did get the area fliered. Sam & Salsa are on their way to verify the sighting. As more details are available, they will be posted here. Check back!

3:25pm - a report from the track has Salsa pulling Sam a breakneck speed. See the map, linked at right, for the track so far.

10:35pm - I don't have the exact track to post yet; hopefully Sam will be able to send the map before long. But the gist of it is that Griffy did several loops in a rather small, tight area, south of where he went missing almost five weeks ago. This different from the February 4th track that showed him looping but the loop was large. And a week ago, he did a loop, north of Little River Turnpike, that was much larger than this loop. Interestingly, he walked right in front of his paternal grandparents house; too bad he didn't know to just plop down on the stoop where his dad would have easily found him just a little while later!

So here's the response to the sighting and track -- one and only one feeding and scent station was set up at the grandparents' house, and a camera has been set up to hopefully show us Griffy eating from it. We can always hope!

Monday, February 22, 2010

Plans for Monday

So remember that last Wednesday's track of Griffy's scent ended at the door of the nature center building, and we were able to reach out, indirectly if not directly, to the people that had been there in the last hours before the track. And no one saw anything. Our response, then, has been to keep spreading the word and to also try to consider other possibilities as to why the scent trail ended there if no one picked him up. Sam and Laura discussed it, and hypothesized (or really just questioned each other, I think) could the door being opened have pulled some scent back to that front door area -- such as a scent that lead away from it? In the end, we don't know, but we've had to just go on the assumption that Griffy is still "out there" and still needs all the help possible to get back home.

A couple of the volunteers found an area on the nature center property that has what could be considered some shelter for an animal of Griffy's size, and there are paw prints and some evidence of digging in the snow, to the point at which even some mulch and leaves were dug up. Ruling out animals too small such as squirrels and chipmunks, and animals that are just unlikely to dig such as raccoons, we are looking at the possibility that Griffy has been spending some time on the grounds of the center. With that that in mind, Gail and another volunteer are going to the Nature Center today to meet with the people there. Hopefully those discussions will lead to a plan that will help us find Griffy there, at the nature center.