Brendan Jesus
Welcome back, fellow treasure hunters! Apologies for my absence last week. Life and work became quite hectic, and I needed some time to regroup mentally. But we’re Looney Tunes: Back In Action! I don’t have any new or interesting UFO-related news but I have started reading James Lacatski’s Skinwalkers at the Pentagon, so I’ll report back if any dino-beavers are mentioned. Without further ado, let’s head back to our favorite Utah-based drill site as we see if the second-to-last episode of Season 3 brings us any closer to getting to the bottom of the Mystery…at Blind Frog Ranch.
Blue Dirt And Black Rocks
We join back up with Duane Ollinger, Chad Ollinger, Charlie Boy, James Keenan, and Ryan Skinner with the rathole rig team at the Energy Zone’s drill site. Season 3 Episode 6 “Back to the Energy Zone” ends with the drill team halting operations for the day when a large storm rolls over the ranch. The harsh sun of a new day beats down on the team as drill master Oscar sends the drill head down the hole, and the day commences.
The drilling starts off without much issue until the team reaches a patch of moist dirt. Thankfully, this is residual moisture from the previous day’s rainstorm, and they quickly dry dirt once more. Oscar has the drill head 90 feet in the earth but is told to halt when Duane notices something odd. Blue dirt (or clay, as stated by the narrator) packs the end of the drill head. Oscar mentions the blue dirt is making it difficult to dig, but we do learn that locals say blue dirt is a bad omen.
A terrible scraping sound from the drill brings the production to another halt. Oscar brings the drill head back up and spins the sediment loose. Someone notices hundreds of tiny black pebbles/beads strewn throughout the blue dirt. Charlie Boy runs his metal detector over it and it beeps. Whatever these black rocks are, they’re metal. Oscar starts to drill again, but quickly pulls the drill out when he realizes the drill’s teeth need to be re-toothed.
Deer, Oh, Deer
Emery Smith comes back to the ranch to reveal what he found from his deer and Water Pit testing. Duane, Charlie Boy, and Chad meet up with Emery while the rat-rig team fixes the drill head. Emery ran the Water Pit sample through a database and came back with DNA that is mostly snake. He says this is odd because it’s not natural for snakes to be out here due to the extreme cold weather. Emery also makes sure to note that the other DNA he found…is prehistoric.
One of the few conclusions Emery comes to is that there must be a large biosphere under the ranch for the snake to properly live its life. Charlie Boy takes this news and runs with it. Basically, he thinks he found an armor-plated 15-foot-long prehistoric snake that lives in a special underground biome on the ranch. Eh.
You Know The Drill
We’re back at the drill, and the teeth have been replaced. Oscar finally hits some sandstone, which is a happy sign after the blue dirt. Duane thinks the sandstone is part of the ceiling to the cave beneath their feet. Suddenly, Oscar notices a problem. The drill isn’t straight up and down anymore. Due to the slope of the cave ceiling they are hitting, the drill head is being pushed at an angle. Even with just a 2-degree difference, this could break the Kelly (drill shaft) very easily. That would be a 100k bill.
Duane thinks the best course of action is to shut the drilling down. It’s but one more failure in a long line of failures for the team. One thing that pissed me off about this is James’s reaction. He complains that it’s the “Basin” that doesn’t want them to get into the cavern below. But, hear me out, what if his calculations were off? James clutches his magnetometer scene after scene like it’s the Ark of the Covenant. WHAT IF his calculations were off? Why didn’t they do a more in-depth scan of this zone TO MAKE SURE they weren’t wasting thousands of dollars on a blind dig? Rather than owning up to his mistake, James attempts to make the failure the fault of the paranormal.
Let’s Get Quantum
Back at the Miner’s Shack, with Duane, Charlie Boy, Chad, Ryan, and James, Duane tells the team he’s going to phone a friend. He calls Stephen Leeah (Quantum Imaging) and asks for his help. Stephen sends out Dave Wilkinson and Michael Boyd (who is a quantum physicist and an archeologist). Once Dave and Michael are on the ranch, Stephen video calls in from France. Well, I say video call, but it’s clear that Stephen pre-recorded every response he has, and the editors forgot to cut out his millennial pauses.
Stephen asks the team to get him more data and samples, which could take MONTHS to analyze. Michael, looking at Quantum’s image of the Keyhole Cavern, reveals that the darker spots in the Keyhole photo are denser than the lighter spots, and it could very well be energy in the images. He’s also yelling for some reason.
The team takes Dave and Michael to the Energy Zone drill site for some tests. Michael, who is wearing a ludicrously silly hat, tells the team they will transect. This involves the team walking in a straight line five feet apart, and they will flag any localized minerals or objects they find. Supposedly, this will help them understand the ground composition. They’re off to a great start as Ryan finds a weird, nugget-looking metal nodule, Michael finds a fossilized rock, and James finds an obsidian artifact. Michael thinks the obsidian artifact could be of Aztec origin.
Dave puts his drone in the air in the hopes of rescanning the area. He flies it over the recently dug hole and flies it into the mouth of the hole.
The next day, Dave and Michael come back to reveal their data. And this time, Stephen is ACTUALLY on the phone with them. Michael tells them that the black rocks found in the blue dirt are out of this world. He did EDX scanning with an electron microscope to look at the crystallography of the samples…it’s Iridium! That means there was a meteor crash on the ranch at some point!
Final Thoughts
As much as I enjoyed Charlie Boy’s subplot, it’s frustrating that it ends with a “mystical” explanation. No, there probably are not prehistoric armored snakes on the ranch. Could there be snakes that reside there who have acclimated to the location due to natural selection? Sure! I would have more faith in Emery if he said that rather than speculated on a Hollow Earth-like atmosphere below the ranch.
James and his inability to accept his own mistakes has, and always will, frustrate me. That’s not very “Indiana Jones” of him.
What I appreciate is them finding the Iridium. Even if there isn’t gold on the ranch, Duane could easily farm the Iridium and make some of his money back. Could the meteor be the dark spot on the Quantum image of the Keyhole Cavern? The long, straight section could be where the meteor slid until its final resting spot. At the very least, this episode brought us some answers into whatever is the Mystery…at Blind Frog Ranch.
