One of my great adventures was that big pile of sawdust. Now, it�s very unlikely that we would have a Zoo close by, say within 20 miles, but we did. I mentioned my great scheme to my buddy Chucky and guess what ? He had connections with the zoo and said what I needed was some nitrogen to cook the pile of sawdust down. Ah-huh ! Yup, you get me some of that, I told him.

Next day here comes this 1961 Autorcar 10 wheel dump truck down our gravel road. Actually we could hear it coming about 1/2 hour before it turned down our road. It screaches to a stop, only because all the brake linings were long gone, and out jumps Chucky. � Got something for ya !� Yah, I can smell it, Dump it down back by the big sawdust pile.
My dog don�t usually get up for old trucks, but this load got her real curious.

Rhonemas, do you know how much an elephant poops in just one day? Well, mix that with tiger, goat and all the other things that came over on the Ark and that was what I had. ...and ripe!
Chucky dumps the load and scratches his head saying the load probably had more when he left the zoo, but nitrogen evaporates quick, ya know. I kind of figured it was the holes in the bottom of the truck, but what do I know? It was free.

I mixed the contents of that load into the big sawdust pile and figured if a little bit of nitrogen worked, why not a lot?
Down to Blue Seal we go and come back with 300 lbs of Urea in bags. ...and we mix all that in with the big saw dust pile. I had heard from a fella that you had to turn over the pile every so often to get air for the bugs to work. So, that�s what I�m going to do. Two weeks later I drive the old Case ( 1968 , for you collectors of vintage iron) backhoe down to the not quite as big sawdust pile and bust into it. OMG ! the temperature guage on that tractor went up 20 degrees. Heck ! It was real close to boilin� over when I got TO the pile and this sure didn�t help. Then, the engine started to sputter and just plain stopped. Some one later told me that engines need oxygen to burn the fuel. I think Chucky told me that.

After I pulled the tractor out of the pile I tried different methods to get air into the ever shrinking pile. The best way was to do it real fast with a bath towell wrapped around your head. That way you could still breathe and not get blisters on your face.

That old saw dust pile finally settled down after a year or so and at that point I got religious. We humans mess with too many things we just don�t understand.

Ps. My old dog loved that pile of saw dust. Too bad she was a � long hair shephard�.