photo #1313803

I'm building a house, something from the 19th century. So here in the southwest you'd see peeled vigas sticking out of the adobe at the roof level. I'm making some 2' long peeled vigas to be inserted into holes I left in the east wall. I had a 4' section of log which was cut from a larger viga before the winter—it's been sitting outside since then. As usual out here, beetles would have laid their eggs in the bark and they would chew through the sap layer and eventually leave the tree for something else. I'm then here in the process of removing the bark and getting to the point where I'm shaving the log and I start to see that the grooves cut by the beetle larvae seem rather organized. In fact, they look like hieroglyphics to me. Several of the "words" even have the typical oval around them which would make them a cartouche (which would indicate someone's name).