Needing Answers To A Bayou Mystery

  Almost eight years ago, I had a rather chilling experience.  A tall pine tree next to the marsh edge had had been killed during Hurricane Katrina (some seven years earlier).  Since the tree was far away from the Little Bayou House and since we had so much else to worry about at that time, the tree was left to rot away on its own.  It was at the eight year mark after the tree's demise that I came across a rather unusual item in the middle of the tree's trunk.  A shard of bone had been obviously "preserved" by the tree's growth and was not revealed until the tree collapsed.  When I found the bone it was gleaming white in the late afternoon sun as if it was calling to me to examine it.  I picked up the bone not knowing whether it was of a bayou critter or if it was of a human.  Holding the bone shard, I had the intense feeling that I should not just toss it to the wayside.  My intentions were to let Darling Daughter, Elizabeth, look at the bone as she had taken courses in anthropology in college. She did not live on the Coast at the time but I felt perhaps she would be able to tell me a bit about my bone find when she made a visit.  Sad to say, in the hubbub of every day life, the bone was stowed away and promptly forgotten.  In a mass "spring" cleanup, I found the bone once again and still have questions.  It still feels wrong to toss the bone without at least making an attempt at identifying its source.

  When I found the bone this time, I asked Son since he was spearheading the cleanup of the storeroom where I had stashed the mystery piece.  He studied the piece for a while and made the remark that it honestly was the right size to be a bone from a human but he had no idea.  Of course, he is a math major and not an anthropologist so his guess was about as good as mine.  Now, that Elizabeth lives on the Coast, it will be far easier for her to examine the bone and steer me in the right direction but, being an old lady, the brain is a bit scattered.  She was actually here today and I forgot all about my questions about the mystery bone and why it was in a tree.  Bayou Mysteries abound and this has to be one of the most intriguing and in a way, gut-wrenching.  I guess I need to find someone that may do DNA testing on it to determine its origin.  Hopefully, it is a critter....hopefully. Why does this bone keep reappearing??