Last time I tried to explain to, you, my Blog-followers why it is that I do what I do. Probably the paramount reason I gave is the fact that I learn something new every day. I mean, how many of you know that an elk has only two ivory teeth? Come on now ... admit it ... you had absolutely no idea that an elk even had teeth; you thought they only had antlers.
Ignacio and Sarah - he from (Basque) Spain and she from Montana - stayed with me during his research into renewable energy along the West Coast (he's a provider to the industry, not a developer per se). Sarah proudly showed me the antique ring Ignacio had bought for her birthday next Friday - and this is where the elk thingie creeps in.
I couldn't read the carat gold, but knowing the age of the ring, I guess it would be 24ct - as pure as they made it in them thar days - and promptly guessed (wrongly) the stones to be opals of a kind.
That's when I had a lesson in natural history from Sarah who explained that the boreal elk Cervus elaphus has, amongst its other gnashers, these two ivory teeth and as I can't for the life of me think what they could be useful for, I wonder whether they - rather like man's useless appendix - were stubs of a kind of tusk from elks of the Pleistocene Age. Whatever ... it makes for nice cocktail party prattle.
