Goin' to the Dogs!

flowerbug

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I suppose there is an armadillo down this hole and that’s what the dogs are madly barking at in the 3 AM time frame. This is in the pasture, not the night pen, or there might be armadillo snacks.

View attachment 48120

you never know! new place and all, could be something, or perhaps like good of' Jed Clampett you could find yourself an oil goosher. :)
 

Pulsegleaner

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you never know! new place and all, could be something, or perhaps like good of' Jed Clampett you could find yourself an oil goosher. :)
Your comment actually made me do a little online research as to how likely that TV scenario actually was, i.e. IS there any oil in Appalachia? The answer is....sort of.

IN addition to coal (which Appalachia has LOTS of) there IS some petroleum and natural gas there (enough to make mining feasible.)

However, from what I understand, most of the petroleum is locked in oil shales. So while you CAN extract oil out of the ground in the area, you could NOT find it the way Mr. Clampett did (by shooting the ground with a shotgun and having it bubble up.)
 

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Locally the concrete armadillos can be purchased with the Texas flag painted on it. Us Texans are kinda partial to our flag, we put it on everything.

Whenever anyone trots out the old saw about "Everything is bigger in Texas" I like to point out that the native Texas walnut, Juglans microcarpa, has the SMALLEST nuts of any North American walnut (actually, I think it has the smallest nuts of any walnut on EARTH, but I don't know the South American and Caribbean species well enough to make a definitive statement.)
 

baymule

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Whenever anyone trots out the old saw about "Everything is bigger in Texas" I like to point out that the native Texas walnut, Juglans microcarpa, has the SMALLEST nuts of any North American walnut (actually, I think it has the smallest nuts of any walnut on EARTH, but I don't know the South American and Caribbean species well enough to make a definitive statement.)
If you are talking about black walnuts, don’t forget that they are devils to crack and pick out. My Daddy loved black walnuts, he had an anvil made of railroad iron and a small sledgehammer to whack them with.
 

Pulsegleaner

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If you are talking about black walnuts, don’t forget that they are devils to crack and pick out. My Daddy loved black walnuts, he had an anvil made of railroad iron and a small sledgehammer to whack them with.
I both am an am not. Tecnically "black walnut" refers to Juglans nigra, which grows on the East Coast. As you move west, you get other species (bearing in mind that all walnuts cross with each other like crazy, so hybrid trees are anywhere from common to the near rule in some places.) There's J. major (Arizona), J. californica (California), J. hidsii (Northern California). The Sand Walnut ( don;t remember the species name, but it's found in Ohio) and so on.
 
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baymule

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Sleeping on the job!

96EE5D32-3E2A-44D5-9A62-C9E2AD9205B8.jpeg
 

Pulsegleaner

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I suppose the answer is still the same? Would it ever be possible to shoot into the ground and get oil bubbling up?
More or less the same (thought it seems there is a lot less, and only around the Oklahoma-Missouri area around the Boston mountains). But again, it's all oil sands and shale, no liquid deposits.

As for if you COULD get oil out of the ground by shooting it. I don't know. Certainly there ARE places on earth where oil DOES reach the surface of its own accord. That's BASICALLY what the La Brea Tar pits are, as well as all of those places in the Middle East where one can find bitumen. And, again, in the middle east, it wasn't unknown in earlier times for the oil level in the ground to be high enough it would show up in things like water wells and pumps. So I suppose that, if the oil was JUST below the surface, shooting the ground might bring some up.

Of course you'd have to weigh this against the possibility that given that shooting does involve an explosion of gunpowder (which in an old shotgun could make sparks) AND the bullet is moving pretty fast with a lot of friction, if you DID hit oil when you shot the ground, you might actually IGNITE it and have a fire spout on your hands.
 
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