Molly Dog, Mammoths, Hot Dogs & B-17s

Well there’s an intriguing title? That’s a lot of seemingly disconnected stuff but it is all connected in my weekend. First of all Molly Dog is on the mend. That’s her in the picture above with the cast on her right front leg. She’s learning to hobble around on it and thankfully hasn’t bitten at the cast. The vet said it would cost $69 to replace the cast if she tried to chew through it. I really didn’t want to put a cone on her head to stop her from doing that. That seemed like “piling on” in her current condition. The cast is about an inch or two longer than her other legs so she has learned to trail that leg behind her and hop on the other three legs to get around. The cast is mainly to hold her paw in a position so that the tendon will heal properly. She will be in the cast for about 10 more days.

As for the mammoths, yesterday The Circle attended a lecture about the Lamb Springs Mammoth Archaeological Site, which is about 10 miles from my home. After the lecture which was held at a local library we visited the site.

Readers know that archaeology interests me and this was an exceptional experience because I hadn’t a clue that this site was right in my back yard. The site is extremely important to understanding not only the extinct animals whose bones were found here but also in learning more about the ancient Clovis people that once lived in this area.

Amongst the bones found here were also artifacts used by Clovis man which proved that these ancient hunters killed animals here as long as 11,000 years ago. That’s the earliest evidence of Clovis man ever discovered and even that record could be broken. 13,000 year old mammoth bones were found at the site that appear to have been broken unnaturally….or very much like ancient humans processed bones. The problem for archaeologists is that no Clovis artifacts were found at the same level of the dig so there was no “smoking gun” to tie one to the other……except for one item. A 33 pound rock was found among the bones. What’s the big deal about that you say? Well, the rock didn’t belong there. The area of the dig was clay with only a few small stones in the area. About a mile away however is the bed of the South Platte River and there are plenty of similar stones there. The stone found at the site had marks on one point that looked like it had been repeatedly dropped on something hard and the marks matched up with the marks on the mammoth bone. Anyhow the archaeology community is split over whether the evidence is strong enough to declare that Clovis Man was present in North America 2,000 years earlier than previously thought. Fascinating.

There really wasn’t much to see at the actual site. All the working pits had been backfilled after the dig in the 1980’s to preserve the area. It was easy however to see the way the land sloped down to the spring, now dry, and imagine animals coming here for water…..Another interesting fact. Archaeologists can tell that the spring was a reliable year round source of water for over 13,000 years. About twenty five years ago however, about the time that this area started to develop, the spring went dry. Modern humans have lowered the water table enough to dry out the spring.

The weather was a perfect as you could ask for and we had a very enjoyable time. After the tour The Circle went to a local hot dog joint called Bernie’s for lunch. I’m not normally a hot dog guy. I prefer hamburgers but I enjoyed the Colfax Dog with a side of onion rings.

Finally, there has been a WW II B-17 bomber flying around this area all weekend. It is a magnificent piece of history and seeing it fly only about 1000 feet over my house on D-Day really gave me the willies….in a good way. You could hear the deep throated roar of the four engines about 30 seconds before you could see the plane itself and I tried hard to get a picture for several days but I was only able to get the one you see here. Even though I had my camera at the ready in the house it always seemed to surprise me by approaching from a different direction each time or catching me too far from the camera to get a shot before it disappeared. I would have loved to take a ride in it but at $400 for a 30 minute ride, it’s a little rich for my budget.

All in all just a great weekend……..

Thanks for visiting.