PhillyDeals: Scooping up business with dinosaur leavings

Doylestown salesman Michael McGrail was up in Regina, Saskatchewan, trying to interest the local government in RFID systems - that's Radio-Frequency Identification - when a display in an airport gift shop caught his eye:

Coprolite. In cans.

Copro-what? "It's fossil dinosaur poop," McGrail told me. "It came from a living, breathing, sweating dinosaur." Long ago.

There are piles of coprolite in Saskatchewan. It's high in potassium, and coprolite miners have found you can turn it into fertilizer - and also that it could be worth a lot more per ounce if you could market the stuff to junior scientists and their generous parents.

The shop owner, Scott Goddard, "had exclusive

rights to collect the petrified excrement" from a deposit in the province, McGrail told me.

A former Madison Avenue adman - "I worked at BBDO and Saatchi & Saatchi" - and single dad to Morgan, who at 9 years old is at that dinosaur-susceptible age, McGrail had a brainstorm.

"They ought to sell this stuff," he said, "at the Academy of Natural Sciences."

The academy has a way-cool gift store. But, no fools, the folks there insisted on McGrail obtaining a permanent export permit from the Canada Border Services Agency under the Canadian Cultural Property Export and Import Act.

"Took three months," McGrail told me.

Result: The academy is now geared up to retail cans containing an ounce or two each of Paleo Poop, each promised by the seller to be 66 million years old and permitted by the Canadian national government.

"We're going to put it out during Paleopalooza Weekend," Feb. 13-14, academy gift-shop manager Hank Hejnar told me.

It'll go for around $30 a can.

Kids, see what we've learned? Dinosaurs used to sweat. And their poop, it's cultural.

McGrail isn't quitting his day jobs. But he's delighted by his new sideline.

"RFID is George Jetson stuff. But I ended up selling something out of Fred Flintstone," McGrail said, citing the '60s-era spaceman and caveman cartoons.

And consider the timing. "It's perfect for your Valentine's sweetie," McGrail alleged.

Sure. Not only is canned coprolite closer than any of the works of man to being eternal. It's even odor-free.

Deals are happening again, but at a discount:

BioScrip Inc., a pharmacy supplier based in Elmsford, N.Y., said yesterday it has agreed to pay $358 million in cash and stock to acquire Conshohocken-based home health-care provider Critical Homecare Solutions, from Critical's owner, suburban New York buyout firm Kohlberg & Co. L.L.C.

That price is $62 million below what MBF Healthcare Acquisition Corp. agreed to pay for Critical Homecare in 2008, before financial "market conditions" wrecked that deal, president Robert Cucuel told the Deal at the time.

Under Cucuel and his team, Critical Homecare bought a string of regional home-care companies around the U.S. since founding the firm in 2006. Officials of the companies didn't answer queries on how many people may lose their jobs as a result of the deal.

Restek Corp., of Bellefonte, near State College, Pa., said yesterday it's buying Glastron Inc., a Vineland, N.J., based high-end glassware and electronics maker, from owners, including cofounder Al Kille, for an undisclosed price.

"There are a total of 48 employees in Vineland, and we intend to maintain full employment," Restek president Don McCandless (he also answers to "Head Coach") told me.

That includes Ed Rohland, senior vice president of operations at the Vineland plant.

McCandless says Restek is even thinking about expanding the works, someday.

Restek is owned by an employee stock-ownership plan. The Glastron employees won't get a buy-in; it will be a private subsidiary, for now. "We will consider employee-ownership scenarios in the future," McCandless added.