Pointy Incisor!

   It seems as if this has been a week of a massive cleanup of the yard.  Not that it is complete by far but, at least, I am attempting to get things in shape.  There is absolutely no excuse since we were pretty much storm-free this past year.  Hurricanes can leave behind a lot of mess but just shuffling it around to other places is not the answer.  So...by literally overworking myself, a start has been made.  Now I have to wait for another "non-rainy" day to continue.

  The work went relatively well for the entire morning.  After hauling away a lot of old debris, I found myself clearing out the old compost pile while Son repaired the grape arbor.  At one point, I went around to chat with him while I rested a bit.  (Being old can be tiring.)  I sat on the small back deck of the greenhouse which faces the arbor.  At one point, my hand brushed against a small, white object on the decking floor.  Hmm, that was pointy!  Picking it up, I came to the conclusion that this was a jawbone of some critter.  I giggled as I thought of Little Red Riding Hood.  "My, what big teeth you have!"  Yep, even though this was only half of the bottom jaw of the critter, that incisor was huge and pointy sharp!

  Son and I discussed the object and came to the conclusion that Bat (the cat) must have been working hard to rid the place of rodents.  This was most likely the bottom jaw of a rat!  Or...maybe a squirrel but definitely a rodent of some sort.  The exact critter was hard to determine because neither of us are up on our rodent anatomy...especially bones.  We both agreed that it did look wicked with that sharp incisor and three molars still present.  You never know what you will find around here on the Bayou.

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??

That's a new one for me!

  My learning experiences never end, here on the Bayou.  There always seems to be a new discovery lurking in the shadows each and every day.  This is good.  The brain needs a new challenge now and again so it might as well be something to do with my own place.  My finds are researched as far as I can go and then compared with what is on hand.

  This morning, Mark and I were on the pier when I found a small tidbit of an oddity underfoot.  My first instinct was to flip the unusual item back into the water since it was quite obvious that was where it originated but something told me to pick it up.  I did and then the questions started.  What was this thing?  It was like nothing I had ever seen before...or was it?  As I was holding the piece, several small "nuggets" fell off and rolled between the boards and into the water.  Oops!  I had intended on getting a photo of it intact.  So much for that idea.  After a bit of discussion, Mark and I had a tentative idea of what the thing was but I needed more information.  That information proved to be difficult to come by, however.  It was definitely some piece of bone from a fish...we knew that much!

  The small piece of bone had dozens of tiny holes in it and in each hole was a "peg".  It was a few of those "pegs" that rolled out as I handled the piece.  Our idea of this being "teeth" from a catfish seems to be correct although I could not find any definitive photos of them.  The hardhead catfish have "plates" with small rounded teeth.  These plates are on the roof of their mouth.  The fish do not have sharp teeth like other fish which is why I have never thought about it.  For some reason, I assumed that they had no teeth whatsoever and perhaps just either swallowed their food whole or maybe mashed it.  The mashing is not too far off from reality as these teeth are small and rounded. We figured that the bone came from one of the catfish that we used as crab bait.  The crabs eat all of the flesh and leave behind the bones.  Emptying the bait box, we obviously dropped the small shard onto the pier and thus began our mystery!  So...now we know or, at least, maybe we do.  I will assume this is correct until I find evidence that says otherwise.  Oh, the things I find!

Chilled to the bone...

While I was out and about the hillside today, I made a startling discovery..some might even call it a bit gruesome. Down near the marsh edge is the remains of a large pine tree that was a victim of Hurricane Katrina. All that stands is about a seven foot tall stump. It is rotting away leaving the center core of heart pine but that is not the unsettling part. What was wedged in among the rotting wood can be declared a mystery!

In keeping with this Coast bird count thing, I decided to make a quick scan of the hill to see if any unusual birds had migrated this way. As I neared the Bayou, a flash of white told me that something worth observing was in a small grove of trees. I edged softly toward the gleaming object thinking that it might be some small bird that I wanted to photograph. As I neared the tree stump, I realized that this was no bird..this object was not moving. There, wedged in the rotting wood, was a bone! A rather large bone to be sure and one that had been gnawed on quite heavily. I am used to coming across the remains of small animals. Hawks and owls occasionally feast in one of the tall pines and will discard bones that are too hard to swallow. This bone, however, obviously came from something far too large to be taken as prey by one of these birds. The bone shard is about nine inches in length and perhaps a bit over an inch in width. It has been gnawed on enough to have lost its original shape but it has evidence of a slight curve along the length. Perhaps a rib? It would have to have come from some animal of good size but what? And if it was of something larger than say a raccoon, just what predator took it as dinner? I stared at the bone..and again mused at why the bone was wedged in the stump. It was almost as if something put it there for safe-keeping. Perhaps it meant to come back and retrieve it at some point..who knows.

As I examined the bone, it became clear that it was not a recent kill. The bone showed signs of age..not just damage from the teeth marks. It was weathered and brittle. Again...confusion. The origin of this bone intrigued me but I had no knowledge of how to decipher the mystery behind it. My daughter took a lot of classes in such things during college and would be a tremendous help in identifying the bone if she was here. I am tempted to send it to her for analysis but then again..maybe things are best left unknown. Another mystery of the Bayou.....