THE SNAIL & THE OLD BOTTLE
W
BY G R E G A . L A N E
hile I was walking my dog one Thursday afternoon near the local cemetery, I saw part of an old bottle sticking up out of the ground underneath some shade trees. It was almost completely covered with dirt and debris. The exposed portion of the bottle looked to be very old and possibly antique, so I decided to dig it up. I was hoping it wasn’t broken or damaged in any way. After a couple of minutes of digging, I finally unearthed the bottle and was excited to find that it was fully intact. Because the bottle had been buried for so long, it was almost completely filled with dirt. So, I stuck a stick down through the neck of
the bottle to break up the clods of dirt inside. As I shook it, clumps of dirt and small pebbles began to pour out. There was one large obstruction inside that I couldn’t get out, though. I thought it was a large chunk of gravel at first and was puzzled as to how something so large could have fit through the mouth of the bottle. I took the bottle home with me and pulled out the garden hose to begin a thorough cleaning. After squirting water into it for several minutes, all the excess dirt had been washed away. Only the large “piece of gravel” remained inside. Because it wouldn’t fit through the mouth of the bottle, I tried to grab it with my fingers to pull it out.
August/September 2022
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