Franklin's Fossil

I love watching the kids cartoon Franklin. In case you don't know Franklin, he is a turtle, his best friend is Bear and his other friends are Snail, Rabbit, Beaver, Goose and Fox. Franklin seems to be about Kindergarten age, his teacher is Mr. Owl. There are a lot of good stories on Franklin and I often find myself explaining things to Joshua by saying "Remember on Franklin when ..." And while it has no relation to this blog entry, it something I often ponder, how Franklin can have a friend Goose but when he finds a baby duckling, it's a pet?

Anyway, one day Franklin and Bear are working in the garden digging potatoes and they find a fossil. They decide to open a museum, charge their friends cookies to come see the fossil. Their friends get upset when Franklin and Bear know nothing about the fossil and demand their cookies back, but, of course, Bear has already eaten the cookies. Franklin and Bear decide to give the fossil to Mr. Mole who knows a lot about fossils and has his own fossil collection.

Because of Franklin's Fossil, Joshua now thinks we can go out into the yard, dig a hole, find a fossil. We go for walks and he picks up every other rock he finds and asks me if it is a fossil. When digging post holes, he had to go through the dirt to look for fossils. He gets my little garden spade (aka his shovel), digs his own holes and looks for fossils. I'm sure fossil hunting is a lot of fun but he just doesn't understand that we are not going to dig a hole in our back yard and find a dinosaur bone or trilobite.

When we went to Mimi's house for Spring Break back in April, we did go to the Fossil Museum in Gray. Yes, Gray Tennessee has a fossil museum. If you are a blog reader and live in East Tennessee and have never been to the fossil museum, I suggest you take a trip there. Who woulda thought that saber-toothed cat, short-faced bear, ground sloth, rhino, alligator, camel, shovel-tusked elephant, Eurasian badger, the world’s largest collection of fossil tapirs, and the world’s only near-complete fossil red panda would be found Gray Tennessee! We toured the fossil dig site and even sifted for our own fossils but it was cold and rainy that day so we didn't sift long. Joshua has plans to attend a summer camp there when he is 7 years old and talks about it often.

We are also members of the Museum of Life and Science in Durham. They have recently reopened their Dinosaur Trail Exhibit - some of you NC readers may remember from school field trips They have a fossil dig site there but sand was brought in from the coast and you are supposed to be able to find shark teeth. Joshua has numerous shark teeth we collected from beach trips but to him, shark teeth are not the same as fossils.

Joshua does have a couple of fossils from Dinosaurs Rock school assemblies at his former preschools. I guess it just isn't the same as if you found them yourself.

So, after watching Franklin and Indiana Jones, Joshua thinks he now wants to be a fossil digger/dinosaur bone digger/treasure hunter when he grows up. I guess it is a little more exciting than my wanting to be an architect after watching Brady Bunch and an advertising exec after watching Bewitched.