Petrified

»Oh, yes, ma´am,« said he. »About them things I can tell you something interesting, and so strange, that if I had not seen it I should be tempted to doubt the truth myself. As my companions and myself were traveling near the Yellowstone Forks, one afternoon last winter, where the snow was very deep, we suddenly came upon a spot on the side of a mountain, where everything looked fresh and green; the trees were covered with foliage, the birds were singing merrily in the branches, the grass was waving in the breeze, and, in short, ma´am, it looked like a spot of summer dropped into the middle of winter. The sight was so strange, that wie concluded to camp. So, unpacking my mule, I took a hatchet and went to a log, thinking to hew us some kindling wood. I struck, and the hatchet glanced. I looked at the edge; it was turned! That log, ma´am, was petrified! I then went to a tree that looked green, with birds singing on its branches. That too, ma´am, was petrified; and, ma´am, the very leaves and grass were petrified; and stranger still, ma´am, the birds themselves were petrifactions.«
»Ah, yes!« said the lady, smiling exultingly, as though she had now caught him. »But you said the birds were singing!« Harris was perplexed. He had gone too far, but resolving not to back out, he exclaimed, »Yes, ma´am, by Jesus, they were! The very notes in their throats were petrified.«

It falls into water, where, over time, each cell is carefully, gently, replaced by minerals brought in by the water – until at last, over many long years, the entire structure has become stone – and a perfect replica of the orginal living organism. A strange miracle.

I once read a headline in a local paper: PETRIFIED HORSE WINCHED FROM BOG. Since I didn't buy the paper I never found out if this was a very scared live horse or a very dead fossilised one. The ambiguity of that petrification was critical to the unsettling nature of an unknown story.