Dang it!

I just totally missed out on a great idea for an April Fools Day story that I could have used for next year.

That thought came to me while I was writing the story about the mammoth bones that is on the front page of this week’s Register.

I mean just the fact that there were ever mammoths roaming around Faribault County is a great story idea in itself. But then add in that some mammoth bones were discovered on a farm on County Road 4 on the way to Frost 100 years ago just adds to the story.

Then toss in some facts like that the bones were taken away to the Twin Cities by some scientist and were lost in some museum basement for 100 years and, man, you have the whole fake April Fools Day story practically done.

There is just one issue, of course. This perfect fake-sounding April Fools story is actually all true.

As the story relates, the bones were found by a road construction crew more than 100 years ago. They were put on display in a Winnebago store window. Then they were taken to the Twin Cities and were just re-discovered and brought back to Faribault County a couple of weeks ago.

It took a lot of work by Faribault County Historical Society’s Randy Anderson to track down what happened to the bones, and then to find out where in the county they had been found 100 years ago.

It was not an easy task.

Lots of emails, letters, phone calls and visits were made to try and locate the missing bones.

Eventually the hard work paid off and Randy not only found out where the bones were, but convinced the people at the Bell Museum that they should be returned to Faribault County.

Now, of course, Randy wants to try and locate the two giant tusks which were reported to have been found at the same time as the other bones, but it is suspected someone made off with them – probably a member of the road construction crew.

Finding those tusks might be an impossible task. Unless, of course, someone out there knows something about it and steps forward with information. Not very likely, but it could happen.

The other thing that could happen is a resurgence in looking for more mammoth bones in the spot where these were found 100 years ago. Even landowner Al Roesler is excited about that possibly happening.

I guess finding mammoth bones in Minnesota is not that rare. A map of the state from 1945 shows dozens of places where such bones had been found. So I guess there were maybe herds of these over-sized elephants roaming around the state.

Who knew?

When those mammoths were here is a bit of a mystery. There is a big spread of time that it could have been happening. Some think it was 10,000 to 14,000 years ago, but others believe it was more like 150,000 to 250,000 years ago.

Randy Anderson is thinking about sacrificing a small piece of one of the Faribault County bones to send it in for a carbon dating test to see how old these things actually are.

There is one more thing that I need to make clear. These bones are not from a woolly mammoth, which is shown on the front page of this issue. Our Faribault County mammoth was not woolly. And he was not a mastodon either. That is a completely different type of animal which is smaller than a mammoth (hence the name).

Still, even thinking about a plain old run of the mill non-woolly mammoth roaming around the Frost-Blue Earth area is pretty darn interesting.

And it sure would have been an excellent April Fools Day story, if only it wasn’t all true.