Travel Bugs and tracking codes

There is another fun element to geocaching that add to the educational angle as well. Travel bugs are small trinkets or pre-made tags that travel from cache to cache via the cachers who find them. They each have their own mission, whether it is to arrive at a destination cache or to travel around the world or even to race other travel bugs to a certain city, and they are aided in their travels by us geocachers. In order to keep track of the bugs, they are given unique codes that must be registered on-line before beginning their treks. Then, when a geocacher finds a bug in a cache, he/she enters the tag code on www.geocaching.com which will show where the bug has travelled from and what its destination or mission is.

Our family has three plastic goat figurines that we have attached travel bug tags to (because our team name is 3billygoats) and these have all travelled in different directions, one down to New York city after a stop in Hawaii, one has become lost in the Czech Republic, and one is currently wintering in North Dakota after a long stay in Manitoba. This adds an opportunity for a geography lesson for interested kids.

If you do decide to pick up a travel bug, it is a courtesy to make sure you move it on fairly quickly instead of keeping it at home for an extended period. We have lost a few that we have to assume have been either kept by an uncharitable person, or have been lost when a cache has been muggled (destroyed by vandals). We are always sad to lose one of our bugs but we hope that the majority of cachers understand that the fun is in keeping the bugs moving.
Have you found any unusual bugs? Tell me about the most interesting bug you have helped along.