X never, ever marks the spot

I'm trying to avoid the actual content of today's strip, so I'm going to tell you a story (that perhaps I've told before, but I don't feel like searching the archives). My dad's name is Fred. A number of years ago, one of our somewhat distant cousins was graduating from high school, and sent us an announcement. On the envelope? "Ferd, [Mom], and the Grils." Fabulous!

So that, naturally, was what I thought of when I saw our protagonist's name. I will say that it's not terribly often we see an archaeologist in the comics these days. I mean, how random! Not that anything about him or what he's doing in the top strip is actually representative of archaeologists, but that's beside the point.

How random, though, that he found a bone in a chicken salad sandwich. I feel like the joke would've worked better if he had been eating fish, and found a whole pile of bones (which has happened to me).

I'm kind of amused to see the suggestion that Walter sent in. I mean, who really sits around and is like, "Wouldn't it be funny if an archaeologist never found a bone when excavating, but broke his tooth on a bone while eating?" Bizarre.