Re: Weirdest thing you ever seen on the water??
Not exactly in the water but certainly right next to it, literally and figuratively.
Place: Lake Novillo in the state of Sonora in Mexico just a few yards from the ruins of the old San Francisco Xavier de Batuc church (built about 1743 and inundated in the early 1960s when the lake was formed by the construction of a dam).
Time: Somewhere over twenty five years ago.
Set Up: The lake had been up for the better part of a year, covering the ruins of the church and the surrounding site of the old town of Batuc, but had fallen to where the church was exposed and was now fifty yards or so from the shore of the lake.
What: I was walking along just messing around, the day before we intended to come back to the States, when I noticed some bones kind of scattered over a small area between the church and the water. I noticed they were colored red, but didn't think much about it. Since this is an isolated area with lots of livestock and wildlife, I assumed they were animal bones.
I picked up one or two bones, looked at them and tossed them aside. Then I picked up the pelvis and one of the long bones . I pretty quickly realized this was one weird animal judging from the way the pelvis and long bone were shaped and fit together. Then it dawned on me. Holy Shirt! This thing looked suspiciously like a human pelvis and thigh bone. Then I begin to look closer at the other bones and, although they were all stained red, it began to look more and more like a human skeleton. As near as I could tell this thing was nearly complete. The one thing that wasn't in evidence was a skull. But, skull or no, these bones were almost certainly human.
I figured they were either an old Indian burial that had washed out of the ground there or were from a recent body that had floated in and rotted while the water was higher. I didn't know whether to notify the Mexican authorities or to mind my own business and get the hell away from there. Finally, I decided that I didn't want to risk having to stay in Mexico while I tried to explain to the state police and/or the Federales how I came to find Senor Fulano, and my exact connection to the dearly departed.
So, I did what my mama would have told me to do: I minded my own business and got the hell away from there. We left for home the next day.
Shortly after I came home the water once more covered the site and when the water went back down there was no trace of whoever he or she had been. The significance of the red color had me puzzled until several years later when an anthropologist explained to me that the local Indians of old often covered the bodies with red ocher before burying them. When the flesh decayed, the ocher soaked into the bones and stained them red.
