Thursday, May 22, 2008

She Sells Sea Shells

Today while wandering the grounds of a local historic home, I caught a brief whiff of something dead. I started to walk away, but my curiosity (and too many hours of watching Forensic Files) kicked in and I simply had to go investigate. The stench was coming from an old basement foundation that's filled with waist-high plants. Visions of dead bodies skittered through my brain as I parted the weeds and peered into the dirt at the bottom of the foundation.

The dead thing did not show itself (puffs of bloody robin feathers gave me an inkling of what creature the smell was caused by), but as I was leaving the foundation I noticed something sparkling by my foot. Further investigation revealed that it was a shell fossil, still embedded in a chip of rock. Quite a nice shell fossil, in fact.

I decided that the proper thing to do would be to go to the Admin office of the home and offer the fossil to them, since I had found it on their grounds. In the admin office they gave me weird looks, talked amongst themselves, and then told me I could keep it. I'm happy because obviously I wanted the fossil, but figured it would be best to let them decide what to do with it. I don't mind being the weird rock lady. That's what I am, after all.

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