Wild Fun at the Fossil Fest!!!

So I always overstate a bit in my titles

 to try and stir up interest.

I worked the Fossil Club of Lee County's silent auction table for the 3rd year in a row

and the only wildness was me scrawling prices on bid sheets and digging through boxes of donations.

I had already vowed to Tom that I was going to relax this year and let Shirley handle the bulk of the operation but as soon as I got there, the control freak within shifted into high gear.

Shirley was so relaxed, it took me awhile to whip her into a similar frenzy.

We had another helper, an older gentleman, who kept watch over smaller items on the bid table.  As the end of the day drew nigh, I announced to him that I was going to add a shot of gin to my ginger ale.  He looked at me blankly which had me worried that he was a man who would never mix alcohol and fossils but then he flatly stated that he preferred a dirty martini.

Cheers!

All in all, it was a success and made a decent contribution to our club.

I came away with a cool new SPF protective shirt.

As I pulled it out of a donation box, a potential bidder asked what size it was, to which I immediately replied,  "My size," and stuffed it back in the box. 

 I made a monetary donation to the club and claimed it as mine.

I usually avoid sun shirts that are white or mostly white as I've learned that spending hours digging in mud while I stand in murky water imparts a tinge that even Tide can't combat but I couldn't resist the shark tooth motif.

Pam, Vickie and I slowed down long enough for a photo opp.

Cute!

Here's a member of our club showing off some of the great crafts for sale:

After the festival ended, 

I headed to Miss Vickie's house in Arcadia to spend the night.

We had hunted the day before the festival and hadn't had a chance to sort through our fossils.

Tired as we were, we checked out our finds, trying to keep the grit of the fossils out of our meals.

My favorite find from that day was Vickie's triangular scute from a giant armadillo.

I've never seen one this shape before.

We also scanned her fossil cabinet with a black light

and witnessed some amazing fluorescence in rhino teeth she found years ago in Wyoming.

Love.

For your continued reading pleasure, here's the Wikipedia etymology of the word "festival"

because, try as we might, it can't be all fossils, all the time.

A festival is an event ordinarily celebrated by a community and centering on some characteristic aspect of that community and its religion or traditions. It is often marked as a local or national holiday, mela, or eid. Next to religion and folklore, a significant origin is agricultural. Food is such a vital resource that many festivals are associated with harvest time. Religious commemoration and thanksgiving for good harvests are blended in events that take place in autumn, such as Halloween in the northern hemisphere and Easter in the southern.

Festivals often serve to fulfill specific communal purposes, especially in regard to commemoration or thanksgiving. The celebrations offer a sense of belonging for religious, social, or geographical groups, contributing to group cohesiveness. They may also provide entertainment, which was particularly important to local communities before the advent of mass-produced entertainment. Festivals that focus on cultural or ethnic topics also seek to inform community members of their traditions; the involvement of elders sharing stories and experience provides a means for unity among families.

In Ancient Greece and Rome, festivals such as the Saturnalia were closely associated with social organisation and political processes as well as religion. In modern times, festivals may be attended by strangers such as tourists, who are attracted to some of the more eccentric or historical ones.

The word "festival" was originally used as an adjective from the late fourteenth century, deriving from Latin via Old French. In Middle English, a "festival dai" was a religious holiday. Its first recorded used as a noun was in 1589 (as "Festifall"). Feast first came into usage as a noun circa 1200,  and its first recorded use as a verb was circa 1300. The term "feast" is also used in common secular parlance as a synonym for any large or elaborate meal. When used as in the meaning of a festival, most often refers to a religious festival rather than a film or art festival. In the Philippines and many other former Spanish colonies, the Spanish word fiesta is used to denote a communal religious feast to honor a patron saint.