The Heartbreak of FaceBook

I can't look at FaceBook fossil pages right now.

In a fossil season where I'm finding next to nothing,

it's painful to see people pulling in hand size megs and whole mammoth teeth.

The humanity!!!

I believe because I struggle with feelings of competitiveness and jealousy that I am even more sensitive right now to people who post fake "in situ" videos and photos.  I know they really found the items they post but just label it as a reenactment so I don't have to sit at home

 venting to my dachshunds. 

Me and my damned eye for detail!

Sigh...

So my last trip to the Peace was, comme toujours,

DISAPPOINTING.

The saving grace was a reality check by a group that passed us in canoes and about lost their sh*t when they saw a single little shark tooth we had found.  

It's all about perspective.

In the spirit of being thankful for the little things in life,

I found these 2 excellent pre-equus horse teeth.

And this was my first cetacean ear bone of this size.  

I usually just come across the small dolphin-sized ones. 

I was wondering if this was a coprolite:

It's fragile, though, and broke and just looks like mud inside, 

but I would imagine alligators end up eating mud on occasion. 

I found a couple of fossilized fish mouth plates

 and dug out some modern fish mouth plates for comparison.  

A fossilized deer tooth from that day compared to modern deer teeth that I just found in a field.

I have modern sand dollars to compare this too, as well, but you get the idea.

A fish nose plate.

(Oh, it's gettin' thin up in here!)

And a small vertebra that isn't even fully fossilized.

That's it.

If I'd written this on paper you would be able to see the tear stains smearing the ink.

Nothing to do but keep digging, and so I shall.

But first, my annual trip to West Virginia approaches.

I'm going a month early this year due to some scheduling issues and may end up looking for arrowheads and fossils in a landscape like this:

Noooo!!!!!

Fingers crossed they get a warm up soon.

I was looking for extra info to add at the end of this post

and started looking at sites about fish mouth plates.  I was a little freaked out to discover that if you keep puffer fish in an aquarium you will periodically need to trim their teeth.

Whaaat?!!!

That right there would be enough to convince me to never keep a puffer fish.  I tried to watch a YouTube video of someone trimming a puffer fish's teeth but I couldn't do it.  You would've thought I was trying to watch live surgery.  Anyway, check it out from the wetwebmedia web site of fish dentistry and other things you never want to do.

Is your puffer becoming a little long in the tooth? Is it starting to resemble Bucky the Beaver? Then it is time to trim your puffer's teeth!

Puffer's Diet

All puffers need hard-shelled, meaty foods to keep their teeth trimmed. Like rabbits, their teeth grow constantly and can overgrow enough to cause starvation in the fish. Puffers eat crustaceans in the wild. Foods for smaller puffers are frozen/freeze-dried krill/plankton, gut-loaded ghost shrimp, glass worms, crickets, worms and small snails (the size of their eye). Snails are an essential food to a puffer's diet, especially when small. Many serious puffer keepers breed their own snails. The easiest way to start your snail "nursery" is to gather them from live plants at your local fish store. Most folks won't mind your taking them, since they are considered pests. Do not feed your puffers the ice cream coned shaped snails called Malaysian trumpet snails! MTS's shells are too hard for puffer's teeth and have been known to crack them, making it difficult for them eat correctly.

For larger puffers, there are many more crunchy foods to eat. Large puffers will eat scallops, shrimp, crab legs, mussels, clams, oysters, squid, lobster and crayfish. Mine love to chase live crayfish, fiddler crabs and gut-loaded ghost shrimp. I gut-load (pre-feed) my live food with algae wafers, so my puffers get their veggies. You should be able to buy most of these foods at the fish department of your grocery or produce store, freeze and later thaw in warm vitamin water as needed.

Improper Diet

Lack of the proper diet will result in overgrown teeth. Once they are long, they will not be able to open their mouth's to eat and will starve to death. Sometimes the puffers will try to eat but just spit back their food. At that point, no amount of crunchy foods can help and the puffer's teeth must be trimmed by hand. Two species of freshwater puffers that need a constant daily supply of snails are the South American puffer (Colomesus asellus) and the less common bronze or golden puffer (Auriglobus modestus). Without enough snails offered to them, they would need their teeth trimmed every 4-6 months. I have both species and do trim their teeth often.

For puffers under 4", fill two, one-quart containers with 3 cups of tank water. Put 3 drops of clove oil in 1 container.

Add the fish. Within 1 minute the fish will roll on it's side and then lay on its back. It will seem dead. This will look scary to you, but your fish will be fine.

Take the fish out with a net, (as to not harm it's skin with the oils of your hand) & hold it through the net. Peel back the net, until the puffer's head and teeth are exposed. Quickly but carefully clip its teeth with cuticle nippers, being sure not to cut its mouth. Their teeth are different than you'd think. It's more like clipping a fingernail. Try clipping straight across and as short as feasible. Make sure to pull down the lower lip and check those teeth too.

Place the puffer in the container of fresh tank water. You should see it breathing. After 1 minute it will right itself, and within 2 minutes it will be swimming around. After your puffer seems calm and is swimming normally around the container, you may place it back in the tank. Keep an eye on it for a while; it should be swimming as if nothing has happened.

This all needs to be done as quickly as possible, as clove oil can also be used for painless euthanasia of fish. The first time I attempted this procedure, I didn't use clove oil. The fish squirmed so much I cut the poor things upper lip off and it never grew back. Also, once the fish is tranquilized, you may remove it out of the water, without the worry of it puffing with air. A puffer puffing with air can become a deadly proposition, if the air can't be removed. I do not recommend tranquilizing your fish if it is sickly or has been weakened due to starvation--it may not recover!

Please note, puffers needing dentistry, have been as small as ¾" and as large as 2-3". This process can also be used on larger puffers. You will need a much larger container and a Dremel tool for trimming. I also suggest a 2^nd pair of hands for handling the big guys.

Good luck, stay calm and happy trimming!