Elbedritsche Hunt LbNA #54022

This box can be found at the Pennsylvania German Cultural Heritage Center on the campus of Kutztown University (directions can be found at http://www.kutztown.edu/community/pgchc). The PGCH serves to study and preserve information about Pennsylvania German life. The grounds consist of a number of old historic Pennsylvania German buildings – a barn, a one-room schoolhouse, and a farmhouse, among others -- which hold displays of traditional Pennsylvania German rural life. They hold numerous events throughout the year, including the Heritage Harvest Fescht, Christmas and Easter on the Farm, and a Pennsylvania German cultural camp for children. This box is outside, so you can find it at any time.

The elbedritsche is a reclusive creature, and is often only found outside on the coldest of nights. The animal is so rare that there is disagreement on what it looks like. Most agree that it is a bird, but beyond that, there isn’t much consensus. The elbedritsche is native to the Palatinate of Germany, but apparently some of them stowed away and came to Pennsylvania with the early German settlers, because occasional sightings have occurred in southeastern Pennsylvania.

A traditional elbedritsche hunt usually requires a party of several people. To catch the creature, you typically need a large sack, but in this case, a letterboxing kit will serve as an adequate substitute. The catcher stands in the woods in the dead of night with the sack, and the other members of the party are supposed to scare up the elbedritsche from the undergrowth (though they’ve been known to wander off to the nearest tavern and leave the luckless searcher holding the bag, as it were).

The elbedritsche is said to be a distant relative of the Midwestern snipe, who is also often the subject of lengthy, often fruitless searches. Some have said that the elbedritsche doesn’t exist at all, and is merely a made-up creature used to play a practical joke on the unwary. Don’t believe it -- the elbedritsche is alive and well in Kutztown!

Start your elbedritsche hunt on the middle step of the front steps of the Freyberger Schoolhouse, a restored nineteenth-century one-room schoolhouse on the grounds of the Pennsylvania German Cultural Heritage Center. At a compass reading of 270˚, walk about 42 paces (1 pace = one single step), and you’ll find yourself at the front side of a classic Pennsylvania barn (typified by the overhang in front to shelter the stable entrances, and the earthen ramp up the back side of the barn to allow easy access to the top floor).

Examine the front doors on the overhanging second floor. Look closely! One of these doors is not like the others – more specifically, one of them isn’t actually a door at all. Stand directly underneath the fake door. Go 59 paces due north to a corncrib, near a wetland area. From the south side of the corncrib, go due east 44 paces to a white door (on the summer kitchen building). From here, look around and find a hand water pump – walk to the pump (about 16 paces). From the pump, follow a bearing of 174˚ about 57 paces to an evergreen tree at the corner of a building. Sneak in around the right side of the tree, and search in the branches near the base of the trunk. You’ve found the lair of the elbedritsche! Please re-hide the box tucked up in the tree branches, not just sitting on the ground. Be discreet when finding and hiding the box, and let us know how the search went.

You’re now one of very few who have ever seen this rare creature! While you’re in Kutztown, you can also check out our other local letterbox, “Radiant Baby.”