Animal Crossing tips?

Games
1

One of my citizens (Curly, who, by the way, told me this morning that he thought Zabuni gave off a lonely child vibe ;) ) keeps asking me for fossils. If I mail them to him, he doesn’t seem to notice, and I can’t figure out how to hand him one… what gives?

Also, is there any way to tell if a tree is a fruit tree or not, besides waiting a few days to see if it bears fruit? What’s the length of the growth cycle?

Seeing the tiles on the ground in front of UC’s gateway makes me think that there’s a fair amount of stuff I’m missing in the game.

2

You have to ID the fossil before you can give it to him.

Edit: fruit takes 1-3 days to grow, I think. There’s no other way that I’m aware of to definitively ID a fruit tree other than that. Oh, and the “pine” trees aren’t fruit bearing :D

3

The only way to win is to not play.

4

You can cross animals all you want, you’ll just end up with a couple ligers and an angry penguin.