And this bag was, like, dancing with me...

I arrived at the Aurora Fossil Museum last Wednesday to find that the weather was starting to take a turn for the worse.  The forecast was for 40% chance for rain with very windy conditions from a tropical low system that was sitting off the coast.   The clouds were looking ugly and the winds were picking up.  I quickly toured the museum, got a Lincoln’s worth of tickets for the 2009 Memorial Day Fossil Festival’s “MEG” tooth raffle and then darted across Main Street to the Pungo pile.

I took out my small graduated plastic screens in anticipation of finding my first Pungo finds.  I was excited to get my first “hemi” which went a little over an inch.  I was amazed on how sharp and detailed the teeth were especially the sand tigers and their cusps.  I guess I’ve been used to the GMR “worn” assortment. 

I had a decent collection of teeth in an hour when I noticed my small Plano container doing cartwheels past me….rolling over the piles.  Did I mention how windy the weather was?  It finally came to a rest and you guessed it….. an empty container.   I back tracked the route doing the “Pungo Crawl” and recovered about ten percent of them. 

About 15 minutes later an elderly couple came to the pile and asked if I found anything.  I said, “Yeah… about 15 minutes ago”…. and told them my story.  They sat on the retaining wall area and scratched around for teeth.   About a half hour later I see this plastic grocery bag blow past me along the ground, in the air and all around.  The first thing that came to mind was the “plastic bag scene” in the movie American Beauty.  Then the elderly man, followed by his wife, was franticly trying to catch it.  It was a site to behold; you would have thought they had a million dollar winning lottery ticket in that bag.    It finally got tangled up by some electric support cables across the street.  And just like me, empty.   I couldn’t believe they kept their finds in a plastic grocery bag, especially after I told them what happened to me.  I ended up going to my car and gave them a gallon zip-lock baggie which they gladly accepted.  I told them it still may  end up blowing away, but at least your teeth will stay in it.

A little while later a mother and her young daughter arrived.  I don’t know if it was because I was the only one with a shovel, with some screens or that fact that I was digging a new home for Punxsutawney Phil, but the daughter decided to “scratch” around my area.  

She got all excited when she found a “nice” tooth and showed it to her mother.  Then she bravely came up to me and asked me if I knew what kind of shark tooth it was.   “Hmm…that would be from a Snaggletooth Shark”, I replied.  (The tooth looked exactly like my biggest “hemi” which was recently in my Plano container….LOL).  I figured that was a sign that I spent enough time at the pile and decided to try my luck back and the GMR before the skies let loose.  So I filled a couple of buckets with some Pungo material for my daughters sand box and I was on my way back to Greenville. 

I am really looking forward in having the opportunity to “play” in the big sand box for the first time at PCS in November.  Can’t wait!!!!

enjoy….

brachiomyback