Hokey Smokes!

     While many of the "cleaned up" stones piles at Acton's Trail Through Time on Peter's post of 5/29/14 {http://rockpiles.blogspot.com/2014/05/actons-trail-through-time-nashoba-brook.html} reminded me of the stone piles in my own Chickenyard Through Time here at Happiness Farm in Woodbury CT, there is one particular stone pile that made me exclaim out loud (and wake up the cat) when I saw it:

PWAX Photo

Source:  https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjETAdYIAu1tBh-WBbEOaoHpVQzXd-SmwMZBdembe7W30gk5Xzx5HXCgsXVX9bTGieWg0CpCvPNqqXvY6BWlejcZ3XvyB2qFngUtzHMbWoBXGKsn6MhoRQIq5ZXu9eAea3XbTNAKA/s1600/NashobaTTT+(17).JPG

   You may or may not say "Hokey Smokes!" when you see this, the first clue to me that what I assumed were old farm heap's o'trash and "cleared out of the way on a non-existent wilderness on the one-time (1659) Frontier of European Colonial Civilization to tidy up around one of the oldest houses still standing" stone refuse piles were actually Indigenous Stone Piles. I was gathering wood and picked up a small branch  by the old chicken coop when I first noticed this rather Testudinate grouping of stones:

Actually that is not my first photo of the Petroform, but a much better one taken after some of my own careful clearing and cleaning a few years later. Do I know exactly why there seems to be one bigger wide foreleg and one smaller more sort of pointed foreleg on many other Turtle Petroforms I believe I see? No, I don't. I just know that it is sometimes but not all the time so.

I'll highlight and desecrate Peter's photo to show you what I mean:

The forelegs may be reversed on the sides of a similarly shaped head stone but I think I see them clearly. And while not identical but similar, the same may be true of the carapace stone with a similar pointed nuchal scute thing going on (as opposed to a recessed "notch"), the Chickenyard Petroform as it is seems more realistically sized, although the two stones beside the Acton Petroform may suggest there may or may not be some stone scutes missing from the construction that as it is doesn't seem as realistic a representation. Note that smallish lighter colored stone in both stone piles between both possible head stones and right front forelegs. In the Chickenyard, they appear to possibly be stones to prop the carapace up so that the legs could fit into that upper shell properly... 

Feel free to say "Hokey Smokes!"