He wishes he could ride back and forth on the ferry all day. Instead, you can find him taking walks around Winslow, gathering items for the hunt. You might have even noticed him in your yard in the dead of night.

Nathaniel Moss has been a Pokémon fan for the majority of his life. Now, in his spare time, he plays Pokémon Go. But he’s more than just your average Pokémon trainer.

“My boss at work has started calling me Pokémon Master instead of my name. I’m OK with it,” said Moss, a 34-year-old islander who works in tech support at Avalara.

He’s already hacked the Application Programming Interface of the mobile game so he can find Pokémon more easily and helped create a Pokémon scanner on Reddit.

“It’s not just about an energetic electric mouse; that mouse has hidden stats and traits that make it special and unique,” Moss said.

Getting to his level of mastery is no easy feat. Walking around the island leisurely with friends may be the go-to method for other trainers, but Moss says there’s barely time to put on his shoes.

“I’m level 24,” he said referring to his progress in the game, “so leveling takes a ton of individual time to find the Pokémon you need to keep up the level grind. It is lonely at the top.”

He also unites with his coworkers to keep the Winslow Pokémon gyms on their side all day long. The gyms can switch ownership between the three teams quickly if they aren’t reclaimed with friends.

Even as a huge fan, there are still some things Moss dislikes about the phenomenon of Pokémon Go.

“Playing Pokémon as an adult either means I’m immature or a child abductor. I’m neither,” Moss joked. “I’m an avid gamer who just wants to catch ‘em all. I’m also not a fan of hearing other players trespassing or destroying property to get a Pokémon. Not cool.”

Moss knows that there are ways to be smart about playing the game. He even has a name for those who don’t stay alert: Pokézombies.

“They’re the teens/adults who stare down at their screen standing in the middle of a Walmart parking lot, oblivious to the traffic around them,” Moss said. “Or will just stop in the middle of foot traffic because something spawned.

“I pulled a guy out of the street last week because he was standing in the middle of Winslow Way trying to get two PokéStops, and there were cars coming, and his game was crashing. He was entirely focused on his phone.”

But almost all trainers are guilty of getting a little too wrapped up in the game.

“I found a Dragonite at some guy’s house out in west Bainbridge using my Pokémon radar,” Moss said. “I felt so uncomfortable trying to capture it while standing in a guy’s yard at 2 a.m. It ended up escaping, and after coming back to my senses, I realized I looked like a Pokézombie on someone’s yard. I’m sorry if they were creeped out!”

Moss was first introduced to Pokémon at age 11, when he bought a copy of one of the first released Pokémon video games on a whim. Because the game was in Japanese, Moss was inspired to learn the language.

Then at 18, he became a “Gym Leader” at Toys “R” Us, where he led kids in the card game and video games every Saturday for five years. He was nicknamed Professor Moss, and he even got a Pokémon lab coat out of the gig.

Moss went to San Diego for the Pokémon Trading Card Game World Championships when he was 19, and he managed to earn ninth place globally in the Master’s Cup.

Now primarily focused on Pokémon Go, Moss notes that the ferry is a great place to find rare Pokémon. He recommends Battle Point Park for its abundance of PokéStops and Safeway for trainers who want to level up quickly.

“The first night the game was released, Winslow Way was packed with people who were chatting with each other and walking in the cool night air,” Moss said. “It felt like something out of the 1950s, but with smartphones instead of cars.”

There are already many online groups to help organize Pokémon Go events and meetups, some of which Moss has joined. This game won’t be disappearing anytime soon.

“Summer was the appropriate time for this game to see launch,” he said. While its popularity might change with the season, “there will be Pokémon Go players for years.”