teeth. Nearby was a slab of brown, curved, the length of a boat rib. Again, I knelt.
“That’s a fossilized manatee rib,” Owen said, distracted. “Or could be camel; they’re common. Mammoth bones and giant sloths, too, but those are bigger. Fragments are tough to identify.”
I kept my response light. “You’re a collector?”
“I’ve never met anyone in the phosphate business who wasn’t at least interested. Can’t help yourself. When I was in college—this was way before Leland hired me—I’d come here. Now, to help with upkeep, we charge fossil clubs a group rate, but I never leave them alone. A guy told me this little stretch was the bend of a prehistoric river. River bends are always good places for fossils.”
The curve of the ridge, I noticed, continued across the property lines. There it gathered a bristle of trees and followed the remnants of a creek.
“Some fossils must be valuable, huh?”
Owen said, “Hardly ever,” but a little too quickly, and resumed his inspection. “Pretty nice megalodon tooth. Serration’s not bad. The bourlette’s mostly there, but the point’s broken off. The shark probably attacked something when he lost this tooth.”
I said, “I doubt income from fossil clubs could even pay taxes on a property this size.”
“Leland raises cattle, too—the ranch is over the next ridge.” Owen talked about cattle for a while but felt more comfortable discussing sharks. “Cool thing is when you find meg teeth near whale ribs that still show serration marks. The same teeth that killed the whale, see what I mean? Florida was underwater back then, so no dinosaurs, but there were still monsters here. Megalodons were as big as Greyhound buses. You ever see a great white?”
Rather than pressing him about property and income, I described my first encounter with a great white shark while cage-diving off South Africa.
Owen asked knowledgeable questions about diving, then handed me the tooth. “Anything else you find, feel free to keep. On the way, we’ll stop at the ranch.”
“Do you raise anything but cattle?”
“Yeah—something that’ll surprise you. The property manager lives nearby, but he’s pretty old, so I won’t bother calling. Just a quick stop and you’ll understand why the twins are against mining this place.”
An elephant
—that’s what he was talking about. A suitably mammoth-sized old bull named Toby—and plans the twins had commissioned for a facility that would care for elephants when circuses were done with them. They had commissioned the plans three years ago, according to Owen, but new interests were weakening their resolve.
I stood at the fence—four thick cables that sizzled and popped with electricity—and watched the animal while Owen walked away with a phone to his ear. I’ve seen elephants in the wild, so the circus variety always strike me as tragically misplaced. Toby had a lot of space, though. His own chunk of land separated from cattle grazing in the distance. Like all domestic elephants, he was Asian. Like most bulls in captivity, he had been castrated—shortly after birth, Owen said. What made Toby unusual was his fully grown tusks.
He was a survivor. Toby had outlived two generations of Albrights, as well as Henry L. Albright’s original pack of five, and was now grazing alone at the edge of a pond—a circle of black water ringed by cypress trees and cattails. Orienting myself, I guessed this was the pond that was connected to the dried-up creek we’d seen earlier.
Owen returned and told me the basics: the electric fence was high voltage but low amperage, not lethal, yet a barrier to Toby, who weighed about ten thousand pounds and was fifty-eight years old.
Interesting. Even a five-ton animal, with tusks as thick as my legs, can appear damn-near cuddly. And Toby did—until I noticedhis sharp old eyes tracking us from a hundred yards away. He didn’t approach, but he didn’t miss anything.
“I’m surprised he
“That’s a fossilized manatee rib,” Owen said, distracted. “Or could be camel; they’re common. Mammoth bones and giant sloths, too, but those are bigger. Fragments are tough to identify.”
I kept my response light. “You’re a collector?”
“I’ve never met anyone in the phosphate business who wasn’t at least interested. Can’t help yourself. When I was in college—this was way before Leland hired me—I’d come here. Now, to help with upkeep, we charge fossil clubs a group rate, but I never leave them alone. A guy told me this little stretch was the bend of a prehistoric river. River bends are always good places for fossils.”
The curve of the ridge, I noticed, continued across the property lines. There it gathered a bristle of trees and followed the remnants of a creek.
“Some fossils must be valuable, huh?”
Owen said, “Hardly ever,” but a little too quickly, and resumed his inspection. “Pretty nice megalodon tooth. Serration’s not bad. The bourlette’s mostly there, but the point’s broken off. The shark probably attacked something when he lost this tooth.”
I said, “I doubt income from fossil clubs could even pay taxes on a property this size.”
“Leland raises cattle, too—the ranch is over the next ridge.” Owen talked about cattle for a while but felt more comfortable discussing sharks. “Cool thing is when you find meg teeth near whale ribs that still show serration marks. The same teeth that killed the whale, see what I mean? Florida was underwater back then, so no dinosaurs, but there were still monsters here. Megalodons were as big as Greyhound buses. You ever see a great white?”
Rather than pressing him about property and income, I described my first encounter with a great white shark while cage-diving off South Africa.
Owen asked knowledgeable questions about diving, then handed me the tooth. “Anything else you find, feel free to keep. On the way, we’ll stop at the ranch.”
“Do you raise anything but cattle?”
“Yeah—something that’ll surprise you. The property manager lives nearby, but he’s pretty old, so I won’t bother calling. Just a quick stop and you’ll understand why the twins are against mining this place.”
An elephant
—that’s what he was talking about. A suitably mammoth-sized old bull named Toby—and plans the twins had commissioned for a facility that would care for elephants when circuses were done with them. They had commissioned the plans three years ago, according to Owen, but new interests were weakening their resolve.
I stood at the fence—four thick cables that sizzled and popped with electricity—and watched the animal while Owen walked away with a phone to his ear. I’ve seen elephants in the wild, so the circus variety always strike me as tragically misplaced. Toby had a lot of space, though. His own chunk of land separated from cattle grazing in the distance. Like all domestic elephants, he was Asian. Like most bulls in captivity, he had been castrated—shortly after birth, Owen said. What made Toby unusual was his fully grown tusks.
He was a survivor. Toby had outlived two generations of Albrights, as well as Henry L. Albright’s original pack of five, and was now grazing alone at the edge of a pond—a circle of black water ringed by cypress trees and cattails. Orienting myself, I guessed this was the pond that was connected to the dried-up creek we’d seen earlier.
Owen returned and told me the basics: the electric fence was high voltage but low amperage, not lethal, yet a barrier to Toby, who weighed about ten thousand pounds and was fifty-eight years old.
Interesting. Even a five-ton animal, with tusks as thick as my legs, can appear damn-near cuddly. And Toby did—until I noticedhis sharp old eyes tracking us from a hundred yards away. He didn’t approach, but he didn’t miss anything.
“I’m surprised he
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