Amazing what you can find in your yard…I was planting marigolds in a new place this year and the first trowel down, I hit something hard. 

When I pushed the dirt apart to see what it was, it looked like a … a SKULL!  I pulled it out and excitedly called my nephew Grant.

Emma and Grant are my niece and nephew in Alabama.  I always bring them something cool when I go down to visit.  I’ve taken a jar of lightning bugs, a hummingbird nest, neat rocks, sweet corn ( yeah baby! ), all kinds of good Iowa stuff.  Grant has always had a big interest in dinosaurs, bones, etc. and he has Asperger’s Syndrome where you are very bright, but get fixated on something and won’t let go of it.  Last year he got fixated on forensics and has a Forensic wall where he’s drawn DNA helixes, colored a piece of paper red for blood and torn it up, put it in a baggie and labeled it as evidence.  His forensic wall is full of that stuff and he’s eight years old. 

Anyway, I called and said “Grant!  Aunt Dawn found a SKULL!”.  He was silent a second and then breathed, “Cool!”.  I told him I would bring it down the next time I came and it was dirty.  Did he want me to clean it up or bring it as is?  He hesitated and then said to leave it dirty.  In that case, I wasn’t bringing it in the house, so I put it in the rock garden.  When people came up the walk, like Vanna White, I would gesture to the skull and say “Look what I found!”.  There were admirers, let me tell you.

It was there for three or four months and finally I was headed to Alabama to see my BRAND NEW GRANDBABY! (had to get that in the story somehow, ha!)  I packed the skull in two white plastic bags and put it in a safe place in the trunk.  You can imagine how much grandma was bringing on the trip down…the car was packed to the gills.  I even had Trixie, my dog, with me. 

We got to Huntsville in the wee hours of the morning and I went straight to the hospital to see my GRANDBABY! (LAAAA!  She makes me feel like singing.)  Later that day, I made it to see Emma and Grant with the bag of goodies.  I handed everything out and then for the grand finale…the skull.  Very carefully I drew it out of the goody bag and trying to create more memorable drama, said, “Now Grant…this is the skull.  I left it dirty for you.  Aunt Dawn doesn’t know if it’s a dog or a deer, but take it to school and your teacher will know.”  In amazement, he says “WOWWWW!” 

My brother in law, Jack, and Emma were standing off to the side.  Jack has a funny look on his face and I said “Jack, do you know what kind of skull it is?”.  He starts making head gestures that were startling and I said “Jack, what is it?  A dog, a deer?”  He looked at me really intently and said “Is Ron okay?” (Ron is my ex-husband, who left a lot to be desired.  That is being as politically correct as I can be.)  I said “As far as I know, what is going on????”   The air was really charged with bad news.  It was so bad, my niece started crying.  Jack said, “That’s not a skull.  It’s a tailbone.” 

My mind was not keeping up with this.  The grand finale present was WHAT???!!! 

He said very seriously, “A …HUMAN… tailbone.”  

Now my sister walks in and asks what’s going on.  Emma runs over crying and puts her face in my sister’s leg and Jack says “Grant isn’t taking that anywhere.”  Now Grant is getting upset too. 

I’m still trying to wrap my arms around planting marigolds in my yard and finding something that’s shaped like a sloping dog skull with eye cavities and even sinus cavities and how does this relate to a human tailbone? 

My brother in law leaves the room and I start to explain to my sister what he said.  She yells “Jaaaccckkk!” and we go into the family room where he is pulling it up on the computer.  If you search for human tailbone some really disturbing pictures come up that had my niece wailing even harder and me feeling sick.  Oh…although it looks like some of it is broken off, sure enough, it looks like a human coccyx.  Uh wow…for someone who usually knows what to do in EVERY situation, I am completely at a loss.  

We decided that I would take it back home (to the sheriff!) and for Grant’s forensics wall, my sister took pictures of it with a ruler at the top and bottom.  It was approximately 9″ x 9″.  I carefully put it back in the two white bags and placed it on my back seat.  There was only one day with my GRANDBABY! and I headed to the hospital, where my heart was full to the brim with baby and the skull was quickly forgotten.  

The next morning I left early and after driving all day, was almost out of Kentucky when my sister, Holly, called.  I was trying not to roam with my phone, everyone knows how expensive that is, so I said hurry up.   She said “Where’s the bone?”  I told her it’s in the back seat, why?  She let out a SQUEAK and said she had just left Emma’s cheerleading practice, where she had sat by a nurse.  She had shown the picture and told the nurse about the skull (I am still obviously in denial) and the nurse was really quiet.  My sister said “WHAT?”.  Apparently the nurse said it looked like it was SEVERED.  HUH??

I could hear my mother in the background saying “Tell her to be respectful.  It was a person once!”   I told Holly to tell her I had made it a garden ornament for three months and now it’s in my back seat.  Of course I am being respectful.  After I hung up, I pulled over and it took everything I had in me to pick it up and stow it in the trunk.  I’ve seen way too many scary movies and still have 350 miles to go with the bone in the car.

I made it home in the middle of the night, unpacked the car that was considerably less loaded after delivering baby stuff, but left the bone in the car.  The next morning I had to be at the Capitol where I worked all day and got back to my office around 6:30.  My office is across the hall from the sheriff.  I didn’t see his car, so came in with the bone and put it on my desk.

The W2L Women to Leadership Conference was the next weekend and members of my Steering Committee were coming in to help put binders together at 7:30.  I got things organized and while we were working, I was telling them the story.  Linda Fischer, Ranae Becker, Deb Lohrer, and Nancy Farmer all said, you turned it in right?  I said, well Randy isn’t here, so no I haven’t yet.  Their eyes big, one said “Where is it?”  Nonchalantly I said, “Oh, it’s over there on the desk.  Want to see it?”  They all came over to look at it and trying to relieve me, say they can see how I thought it was a skull.  I carefully and Respectfully Mom, wrap it back up. 

We go back to the table to continue on the binders and they all have some stories about ghosts in houses they’ve lived in and the hospital.  We were getting creeped out and all of a sudden, the fire alarm starts going off with the lights flickering and sirens.  Everyone looks at me and said, “What’s THAT!!?”  Heck, I don’t know, a fire alarm?!   

The alarm turned off momentarily and then there was an urgency to GET THE BONE OUT OF MY OFFICE!  Linda Fischer starts saying she’ll go with me to find a deputy or she will call Randy.  We were all spooked.  I looked out my door and the deputy’s room was dark.  As I came in to say they were all gone, one walks right behind me.  Linda and I go out to catch him.  He was heading out and I said I had found a human bone in my yard while planting flowers in the spring.  (yeah, it sounds lame now, but who could make this stuff up?)  The deputy says something like “Could you come back tomorrow?  I’m the low man on the totem pole.”  Nervously, I say I guess and Linda and I look at each other.  She says firmly to me, “Do you want me to call Randy? (our sheriff)  I will call him.”  And I say I can call him…so almost 8:30 at night, I’m calling the sheriff about a bone I had dug up 4 months earlier.  He says he will be right in.  Phew…we all relaxed a little because he’s so efficient and CALM.

All of us ladies continue working on the binders and here comes the Sheriff, looking at me in a way he never had before…that’s what I was thinking anyway as I told the story of how I found it and what my brother in law and the nurse at cheer practice had said.  He said he would check it out and took it from me.  I told him I was in Des Moines the rest of the week, in Philadelphia the next week and in Alabama for three weeks after that.  Please, I hope you do not excavate my yard while I’m gone.  We all laughed nervously.  After he left, the ladies said you HAVE to BLOG about this and I said we’ll see…trying to be respectful.

The next two days I had to drive back and forth from the Capitol and told the story to one of my colleagues who is an attorney.  She said it is a great story Dawn, but hold the blogging until you know what it is.  What a headline that would be!  Uh yeah, you are right.    

So, I do my business in Des Moines, have the W2L Conference on Saturday, go to Philadelphia and am in intense investment training at Wharton, when my phone goes off and it’s the SHERIFF.  Stepping out of the classroom, I give him the same “roaming” spiel and briefly he says, “It’s not human.”  What? 

“It’s not human.”  

I look up to the ceiling, pretending it’s the sky and say prayers of gratitude.  All of a sudden my world is back to what it should be, with no cemetery or old burial grounds under my back yard, no former dismemberments, no excavations, no more worries about the bone, that was NOT a skull. 

“Thank you Randy.  Thank you God.”  I haven’t talked to him yet to find out what kind of animal it was, but I did make sure I could take it back down to Grant for his forensics wall.  And when I called to tell everyone in Alabama that it was not human, they were disappointed. 

What a family!   We can sure tell a good story though and will be telling this one for awhile.