Hello there! I recently adopted a new pet! While overseeing the construction of The Great Wall of Terminal 5, I discovered a lonely old stone. Not just any old rock, this one showed signs of life.
Terminal 5 is our orchard in the making, with many baby fruit trees like avocado, lime, mango, banana, guava, and mamey. We source the stone from thev nearby mountains and there are apparently many treasures to find up there. Those are the origins of my pet rock.
Behold!
Just look at all the life it contains. It kind of reminds me of a panspermic asteroid. There are at least 3 types of lichen epiphytically getting on it! My favorite is the bright gold spot.
I give it a drink of water everyday and it seems to be pretty happy. It very much likes its perch on an ancient tree stump pedestal in indirect sunlight. Had I not rescued it, it would have been butchered and nearly obliterated so as to fit as part of the great wall.
My precious pet is not the only thing recovered from the mountains...
Among the latest shipment of stone, we found an ancient metate! Even the word itself (a Nahuatl word) sounds archaic. The fragment, which is mostly half of the original, has to be pre-Columbian and at least since 500 years old! There have never been any modern settlements up there. Where the town is now was once submerged in a vast lagoon. Part of this lagoon still exists as La Laguna de Chapala.
Here is what an intact metate looks like. I won this particular one a few years ago as payment for a day's work with my young uncles. Now you can probably guess what its purpose was: to grind up food, namely corn. The mano or hand piece is not original. I found that rock in my own back yard and it seems to be made out of the same material do it matches.
The old metate would have also become part of the great wall had we not rescued it.
That's all for my stone age ramblings. I hope to find more treasures during my stay here!
Until next time!