Hunting Arrowheads
One night as I was working the late shift as a staff artist at the Tampa Tribune newspaper the phone rang and it was Milton Carroll. He was Sharon's husband and worked as an animal attendant at Busch Gardens. He and some of the zoo crew were at a night club across the street from Busch Gardens. Milton, who had an incredible voice sang there regularly and the gang as usual had come to hear him. He asked me to come there because they needed my opinion on something. The club, in keeping with the African jungle theme, was named The Safari Club. The walls were covered with some pretty decent jungle murals which included many animals scattered in them. The reason Milton called is that they were incensed that the artist had painted tigers and African elephants in the same mural. Busch Gardens mainly had African animals (at that time.) and they wondered if I could convert the tigers into lions. Of course I could but would never tamper with another artist's work.

That night I met for the first time a lot of my future friends. I would eventually be working with them at Busch for many years. I met Dave "The Kid" Coker who would be my partner for years at Busch Gardens. We'd take animal trips all over the world together from Africa to five-hundred miles down the Amazon River. David and I ended up working with eight Bengal Tigers at Busch Gardens after all. People called us "Lash and The Kid". That was in 1969. Needless to say I left the Tribune and went to work at Busch Gardens. I was to learn the parrot show and would later become one of the bird show M.C.s. On my second day at work in the break room a very friendly, Jude Law looking animal attenendant approached me and said " I see we have the same days off. Have you ever been arrowhead hunting?" I said "What's arrowhead hunting?" "It's where you go hunt for arrowheads." Albert said. That was his name. So bright and early on our day off we headed for Lake Thonotosassa. I live in the little town of Tho-no-to-sa-ssa which in Native American Indian means "Place of Flint". There's an orange grove right by the lake where the sandy area between the rows of orange trees is perfect for finding arrowheads especially after it rains. Albert and I walked between the rows keeping our eyes seriously on the ground. We found a large arrowhead about two and a half inches long, a couple of small ones that he called bird points and some pieces that unfortunately didn't fit together. We hardly knew each other so he didn't have a clue about my since of humor. Before I left home I took a brown paper bag and put a package of Oreo cookies in it and told him "I brought these in case we get hungry." "Oh, cool." he said. What I didn't tell him is that I had at home from my vast collection of interesting gee jaws and gim cracks a most magnificent stone aged axe head that someone had given me years before. It was flint and was almost a foot long. I slipped that axe head into the bottom of the cookie bag and carrying it with me, waited until Albert was about twelve or fifteen feet ahead of me and placed it half buried under the sand. "Is this one!" I said kind of loud. Albert turned around just as I pulled it out of the sand. All of the blood drained from his face. I swear he looked like Rumplestilskin. He walked with big dusty steps in a big circle and kept saying "On your first try!" "Within fifteen minutes!" "I've been here dozens of times and have NEVER seen anything like this," He said from behind his hands with his fingers clutched in his hair, kind of muffled and slow "What bothers me the most is that I walked right over it." I couldn't let him suffer too long, about two minutes maybe three and I confessed. He loved it and was so relieved. We became best friends for years and I was best man at his wedding.

Lynn Ash