Zookeeper Fossils: Rehabbing the Digging Mechanism

"Be the shovel, be the shovel..."

Fossiling is hard work and at my age, it's shifted into the realm of painful.

A group of us did a 3 day/2 night camping trip on the river and after 3 days of digging, I was, as the old timers say,

Stove up.

A friend recently turned me on to an Asian massage place at a local mall and I gave it a try.

I'm a long time massage junkie so I'm fairly proud of my ability to withstand deep tissue work. I was once being rolfed and the therapist finally asked, "Are you dead?"

My Asian massage therapist, however, tested my limits.

While she worked on my back, I kept thinking to myself,

"She's trying to break me and I will not give in!"

But then I view massage more along the lines of the lead character in the the German film, "Toni Erdmann" who walked out of her massage complaining,

"I'm not paying 100 Euros to be petted...Bring someone who will beat me up."

In fact, I think I need to assemble my own

fossiling physical therapy team

composed of massage therapists, chiropractors, and OCD therapists.

I may talk a lot about my love of gin but when I'm digging, I mostly keep it clean.

Why look! Here's a selfie of me eating a healthy snack!

But enough about me, let's look at the fossils.

Here's my haul, laid out at camp. I claim credit for the idea of covering the sawgrass in the area with lightweight frost cloths which creates a nice lounging area in our little tent city.

Tom and I have been working on a theory

that we are digging the debris trail of a boat wreck.

We've found the most interesting things in the area including this full bottle of tequila:

I felt Tom should have left it as is but he opened it and even though I warned him that it smelled "poopy", he swallowed a swig.

He survived.

Shortly thereafter, I dug up this bottle:

So I took it to him and told him it was Goldschlager and he should try it.

He declined.

There are other clues to a nice day on the river gone bad:

Just hoping I don't find a .38 Special ball cap with traces of hair in it.

Still finding scutes:

This is a pleasing combination of glyptodont, giant armadillo, and tortoise.

Tom found a beautiful little 3-toed horse tooth:

I was rinsing out this piece of alligator jaw and found a tiny unerupted tooth inside one of the sockets:

Both of these teeth fell into my screen broken in half. Obviously they are very fragile but it's rare to find both halves and in the same screen at that.