Dr. McAllister quickened his pace, came over the rise on the trail and was dumbstruck by what he saw. A bone-white, linen suit jacket was hanging from the handle of a spade. It was not one of the university's spades, but a plain, well-weathered, wooden handled spade, blade thrust in a fresh and quite substantial mound of dirt that actually blocked the good Doctor's view of the Chasmosaurus Belli site.

His pace wasn't just quick anymore, he was running and processing a flood of questions on the run. Why the sudden shift of earth? Where did that shovel come from? Were his colleagues back with volunteers? Where was the power equipment? Whose jacket was that? How long did he have before the rain came? Was it possible for clouds to look angry? Was that actual humidity he was feeling in the air? In this desert? But before he could articulate any answers to any of his questions, he crested the new rise that had appeared since the storm began to brew, grabbed the shovel handle for support (and was quite surprised to be surprised by the smooth but stiff texture of the linen suit) and skidded to a halt, looking down up on a handsome man in bone white linen pants, an alligator skin belt, alligator shoes (Dr. McAllister's ex-boyfriend, you see, was a professor of chemistry in Florida, and was quite fond of alligators, so Dr. McAllister was familiar with the alligator's skin and all its uses), and a bright white athletic undershirt. The man's hair was glistening black, parted to the left, with not a strand out of place; he held a shovel to match the one in Dr. McAllister's hand, and he stood up with a shovel full of dirt, pausing in his work to turn and smile at Dr. McAllister.

"I see you are here, Doctor," he said, with his light and smoothly rumbling Spanish accented English, "Good. I am almost finished. Perhaps you could examine the trench for me?"

Dr. McAllister didn't stop to wonder at Señor Bubalo's perfect teeth, nor at his mellifluous voice, nor that Señor Bubalo's pencil thin moustache -- an affectation that usually turned the doctor off -- made him stiffen with its raw sexuality. No. Instead, he walked purposefully around the Chasmosaurus Belli site with total focus, confirming that the miraculous work done by the mysterious stranger was, in fact, exactly what they needed to protect their find.

A four foot wide and six foot deep trench surrounded the Chasmosaurus Belli skeleton like a moat, and each side of the "moat" included run-off channels to divert the water so that there was no chance of the trenches filling up and spilling their contents back onto the dig, and this completed trench had oddly hard walls, as though they had been baking in the sun for years rather than being fresh wounds in the earth, making further disintegration of the walls of the trench far less likely.

Only later, after the entire area had been fully excavated, did the archaeologists realize just how perfectly placed those trenches were. As conceived and dug by Señor Bubalo, the trenches took three or four seemingly random zigs and zags, yet those zigs and zags turned out to be precise detours to protect future excavations. Three other nearly complete skeletons and a deposit of fossilized egg shells were all saved by those zigs and zags. 

No one ever knows where or when Señor Bubalo is going to turn up. No one knows how long he has been building his legend (although we can speculate). No one knows why he moves from place to place. No one knows where he goes until he gets there, and then he just disappears. No one knows when he was born. But it is possible that Señor Bubalo is timeless, ageless, that he is as he has always been.

Señor Bubalo was encountered in 2010 by a group of paleontologists in Drumheller, Alberta. Professor Dean McAllister and his fellow paleontologists of the Royal Tyrell Museum were working on a freshly uncovered fossil -- a baby Chasmosaurus Belli skeleton -- when reports of a terrible rainstorm reached their work site. The threat of flash flooding threw the diggers into a tizzy. Some protective trenches had already been prepared, but they hadn't been a priority because the chance of rain in the desert hoodoos of Dinosaur Provincial Park was minimal. Suddenly the threat was very real, and the paleontologists were thrust into panic mode as they tried to figure out how to protect their find. They retreated to their base camp to debate their options.

Without heavy machinery there was simply not enough time to extend the trench around the perimeter of the dig site, nor deepen it enough to ensure the baby Chasmosaurus Belli skeleton's safety. Some argued they should call in local help, but that was rejected because it would put them over budget at too early a stage. Some thought they might be able to find those willing to donate the help, and they promptly let the debate to pursue the possibility. Others thought their time should be spent erecting sand bags around the fossil to create an additional barrier. Still others thought their time would best be spent covering the skeleton with dirt, wetting it, then packing it down to create an additional barrier between the bones and flooding. Dr. McAllister, meanwhile, thought they should be recording the skeleton with everything at their disposal to preserve all the information they had about the skeleton in case it was destroyed by the rain.

The argument continued, and like those seeking volunteers before him, Dr. McAllister despaired of the debate and left the tent. He headed back to the baby Chasmosaurus Belli skeleton to make a list of what needed to be done to record the fossil before the storm hit. The clouds were foreboding, and a lightning flash coupled with an almost instant rumble of thunder told Dr. McAllister there was little time left at all. They had to make a decision, and he had to hurry.

And that’s when Señor Bubalo seemed to come out of nowhere to put one hand on the shoulder of the director and the other on the shoulder of the stunt coordinator. He said in his huskily mellifluous voice, "Señors. This is not a problem. I will do this for you." Then he walked over to the mark, as though he had been rehearsing the stunt all day long, and put his foot on the deck of a skateboard that was sitting there as though it had been waiting for him all day long. He opened his arms wide and said, "When you are ready."

The two men looked at each other, then looked at Señor Bubalo, then back at each other again; they were caught in time and confusion until one of them blinked, no one can say who it was, but the blink broke the spell and the decision was made. The men split apart simultaneously and began barking orders to their crews. When they gave an order to or about Señor Bubalo, such as calling for his signature on a waiver or to put on an appropriate costume or don safety gear, the pillar of the set, dressed impeccably in his linen suit, soothingly shook his head and said, "Everything will be fine," and they believed him.

In no time at all the crews were ready, the cameras were rolling, and the director found himself raising his megaphone, despite the fact that Señor Bubalo looked nothing like Bowser Trent nor the actor Bowser had been standing in for and Señor Bubalo had made no effort at all to look like either. Yet there he was on the mark, foot on the deck of the skateboard, ready to save the day's shooting when the director called, "Action!"

All Señor Bubalo needed was one take.

You can watch the scene yourself as it appears in the episode, "Oil is Thicker than Water." The Punk Skater (as he's credited), after knifing a witness -- a woman at the office building's reception desk -- on the order of crooked oil company manager, bursts out the door and onto his skateboard. There is a blur of motion, then the scene cuts to the skateboard rising from the ground in an ollie, then it cuts to the front truck riding the rail in a nosegrind right to the rail's angle drop, then it cuts to a wide shot of the skater (who looks remarkably like the actor), riding the nosegrind to the asphalt below. Then the Punk Skater literally skates off into the sunset, which is precisely what Señor Bubalo is said to have done. 

He and the skateboard disappeared into the sunset of the San Francisco night, never to be seen again by anyone from the cast or crew of that television show.

There have been attempts to corroborate Señor Bubalo's intervention in the "Oil is Thicker than Water" crisis, but even digital enhancements when the show was remastered for DVD in 2001 yielded only the minimum of evidence that Señor Bubalo was more than a group hallucination. Only the first shot of the stunt, when the scene cuts from the Punk Skater mounting his board to the forward motion of the stunt itself, contains a blur of white. That blur, that smudge of motion, could very well be a white linen suit. No one knows for sure.