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Signs Supplement - Mystery Muck
A Wellington woman whose house was
splattered from the sky with a brown smelly substance says the
event is just the tip of the iceberg.
Shonnie Gordon from Takapu Valley near Tawa was still waiting
yesterday for the outcome of tests being run by the Civil Aviation
Authority (CAA) to find out what hit her house at the weekend.
[...]
Mr Sommer said he had received a few calls from people complaining
of similar experiences, but farmers had also said it could be
from ducks. |
Tests done by the Civil Aviation
Authority have found there is no connection between splatters
of foul-smelling waste that fell on a house near Tawa, near Wellington,
and chemicals normally in an aircraft toilet system.
Owners of the property say the mess that appeared on the roof
and sides of their house just over a week ago looked and smelled
like human waste, and they believed it had been dumped by a plane.
Meanwhile, another case of the mysterious splatter has occurred,
this time in Blenheim, where a family say their car and driveway
were hit on Sunday night with a smelly brown substance. |
A Te Awamutu home is the latest
to be hit by a mystery airborne substance.
Hamilton roofer Peter Lowe discovered the brown substance splattered
across the new roof he is working on when he turned up to work
yesterday.
The Civil Aviation Authority yesterday ruled out aircraft sewage
as the cause of a similar incident in Takapu Valley, near Wellington,
last week. |
A Te Awamutu home is the latest
to be hit by a mystery airborne substance.
Hamilton roofer Peter Lowe discovered the brown substance splattered
across the new roof he is working on when he turned up to work
yesterday.
"It looks human to me," he said, carefully avoiding touching
the dried-out splatters. |
Victims of unidentified offensive
brown muck showering people, houses and cars are popping up all
over the country.
Many are blaming aircraft sewage, but no one knows what the splatter
is or where it is from. |
A house in Huia has now been
hit by the mystery brown muck appearing on roofs around the country.
Plumber Murray Norris returned home from work on Friday night
to find what appeared to be faeces splattered on the west wall
and roof of his home.
"If there's anyone who knows what shit looks like it is me -
and that's what it looked like," Mr Norris said.
Some patches of the mess were almost 3m wide but it did not smell.
The suspicious substance has appeared on homes in Takapu Valley
near Wellington, Te Awamutu in the Waikato, and Blenheim. [...] |
A couple have become the latest
target of a mysterious airborne menace that has dumped large amounts
of foul-smelling muck on homes in some parts of the country.
Clive and Raewyn Patching, of Omokoroa, 18km northwest of Tauranga,
were watching TV on Saturday night when something slammed into
their roof.
The next day the couple inspected the damage - "a big splat on
the roof, about 6-7sq m".
The roof was covered in a brown, smelly substance that looked
like cow manure, only "much finer" in texture.
Mr Patching said it seemed his home had become the latest target
of mystery "muck bombings" that have plagued home owners in Wellington,
Cambridge, Te Awamutu and the Manukau Harbour settlement of Huia.
Like other victims, Mr and Mrs Patching believe the substance
came from a passing aeroplane. |
The mystery of aerial spatterings
of excrement on houses has deepened with Hawke's Bay Fish and
Game dismissing accusations that ducks were responsible.
"There is far more of a likelihood that it is pig excrement,"
regional manager Steve Smith said as he defended the female duck
population over what he considered was a bum rap.
In the ducks' favour was the fact they nested on the ground,
not in trees.
And females were reluctant to go far from their eggs. "My experience
is that they walk off the nest to relieve themselves," Mr Smith
said.
Even if one or two did do "the business" from the air it was
far more likely the result would be ground strikes, and not on
roofs.
"The only time I have seen ducks defecating in the air is after
they have been shot at," he said |
Two more Hawke's Bay properties
have been struck by sewage from above - with one victim saying
"no way" a duck could have dropped what she reckoned only flying
emus could have delivered.
The second victim, who had water-blasted the roof of his Taradale
home only a few days earlier, agreed that ducks were unlikely
to have been the culprits.
"I've lived here 36 years, been duckshooting many times and know
a bit about them - but I have never heard of this happening before,"
he said.
Both victims wished to remain anonymous, although both had taken
photographs of the strikes and contacted environmental officers
from the Hawke's Bay Regional Council.
The most recent incident happened last Sunday afternoon as a
Durham Drive, Havelock North, woman was entertaining guests in
her home.
"I wish I had taken more notice of the time but it would have
been between 3 and 4.30pm," she said.
"It came thundering down on the roof ... it did sound like thunder,
it was that loud."
Her husband took a small sample of the material while it was
fresh and the couple have kept it frozen.
Regional council officers were contacting the couple today.
She described the strong smell as "like human faeces" and said
it had rained down in a line.
Five days earlier the Taradale home was struck. "It was scattered
over an area about two to three metres wide and about nine metres
long. That wasn't birds. It was dark and there were bigger pieces
as well as fine spray."
However, Hastings man Bill Liversidge said he had a theory which
may be backed up by personal experience.
A couple of years ago, while at the mouth of the Clive River,
he saw a four-wheel-vehicle scatter a large group of nesting,
migratory terns.
In what he reckoned was some sort of defence mechanism, the flock
"let go" while flying off and left his own vehicle spattered with
droppings. The terns flew in large groups, often at night and
if they were startled they could all go at once.
That theory was close to the mark in terms of how regional council
officers were approaching the incidents.
Examination of the Taradale spattering revealed there was too
much matter for one or two large birds.
"It would have been a flock," one officer said, adding that the
mystery was now confined to just what sort of birds were doing
it - and why. |
It's a bird, it's a plane, it's
. . .
Actually, it's probably poop, and whether it came from a bird
or a bathroom aboard an airplane, it's gross, say residents of
an Oswego subdivision plastered in recent days with what police
describe as "fecal matter."
The Ponds at Mill Race Creek subdivision in the far western suburb
is under an O'Hare Airport flight path, so some residents initially
suspected one or more planes unloaded lavatory waste over the
community.
Police reports were filed, the Federal Aviation Administration
was called, and some folks worried about possible health implications.
But the predominant view seems to be birds were the culprit --
although subscribers to this theory say their homes, backyard
furniture and driveways have never been hit like this before.
"Based upon what I saw, I would say it's birds," said a resident
who didn't want his name used. "I don't remember exactly what
morning, but I'm thinking either Friday or Saturday morning, there
were starlings or blackbirds all over the roofs of the houses."
Some people, though, didn't see or hear any birds.
Resident Dawn Dabrowski first noticed the apparent feces Friday
after getting a call from a neighbor. There's a pond in the subdivision
that attracts geese, but there's never been a mess like this in
the seven years she's lived there, said Dabrowski, a 37-year-old
mother of three.
"It was on the back of my house, the side of my house, on my
patio chairs, patio table, my children's swing set, their Little
Tikes sandbox, their . . . playhouse outside, it was all over,"
she said. "It's brown and some of it's long smears, and it's like
circular in some areas where it's splattered."
While contents of airplane bathrooms sometimes fall from aircraft,
that's probably not what occurred in this instance, said FAA spokeswoman
Elizabeth Isham Cory. If a plane was involved, the waste probably
would be in frozen chunks, and "it's going to be a blue-ice type
of product," she said.
Some residents still were discussing getting the material tested
at a laboratory.
Oswego police Detective Jeff Burgner said: "It hasn't been confirmed
if it was from an airplane or not, and currently it's still under
investigation. We haven't closed the case out yet." |
STEPHENS CITY - It sounded like
hail, sleet, or fat raindrops. But it only lasted about three
or four seconds, and it happened during a sunny January afternoon.
Earl Leyman was sitting inside his Valley Pike home, south of
Stephens City, when the phenomenon occurred.
When the sounds stopped almost as quickly as they had started,
he walked outside to investigate.
"I saw brown spots covering the patio," he said. "Like
big, brown raindrops is what it looked like."
The spots covered his driveway, carport, and cars parked near
his house.
"[My granddaughter's] car was completely peppered,"
said Janet Leyman, Earl's wife. "We've lived here about 48
years and never experienced anything like that."
Janet said she believes the mysterious fluid probably came from
an airplane.
But Earl said commercial airplanes headed toward Washington,
D.C., don't usually fly over his house.
"I didn't hear no airplanes, but then, it might have been
up too high," Leyman said.
Steve Rogowski, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service
in Sterling, said the spots probably are not natural.
"I have never heard of anything like that before,"
Rogowski said. "We just do weather over here, and it wasn't
weather-related."
Leyman said several friends have guessed the spots could be human
waste from an airplane passing overhead.
But most airplanes are not capable of dumping waste mid-flight.
Commercial vendors collect waste accrued in military planes flown
out of Martinsburg, W.Va., by the 167th Airlift Wing of the West
Virginia Air National Guard, Col. Brian Truman said. And their
division, which often traverses the skies over Frederick County,
did not fly at all the day the spots rained on Leyman's home.
"The only way that you can get to the chemical toilets is
from the outside of the airplane," Truman said. "In
other words, there's an access panel to the outside and when those
airplanes need service, they have to physically undo the panel
on the outside and take out the waste. So I'm not saying its's
impossible, but it's very, very unlikely that it could have been
[human waste] for that reason." |
Duck
Muck Returns
Residents near Bourne can't explain black splatter |
By Associated Press
Friday, June 18, 2004 |
A strange gray splatter is baffling
Bourne residents.
The specks rained down on homes, cars and plants near the Bourne
Bridge and a week later, they're still there. Town officials say
it appears to be an oil-based material that was sprayed from the
bridge on June 10th. But officials say it doesn't appear to be
related to any work done on the bridge.
In the meantime, the Cape Cod Times reports that neighbors are
using everything from paint thinner to glass cleaner to try to
get rid of the smudges. One man said he'll have to replace the
vinyl siding on his house.He's hoping to find the source of the
problem so he recover his costs |
BLACKSTONE -- Whatever goes up,
must come down.
It's an elementary law of physics -- and one that will, for a
time, haunt a Lakeshore Drive resident whenever she looks toward
the sky.
The woman (who agreed to talk if she remained anonymous) stepped
out her front door Monday afternoon and found white and gray material
flecked across her lawn, her porch and the front of her house.
When her daughter suggested a vandal with a paintball gun had
fired on their home, she called police.
The explanation offered by Patrolman Steven Livingston was even
more disturbing. He theorized a jetliner had passed overhead while
a passenger was flushing.
"It's not poop, I know it's not," the woman said yesterday, repeating
the line several times in an effort to convince herself.
"It's poop," her husband replied with resignation.
There are skeptics. Even Police Chief Ross Atstunpenas has some
doubts about his officer's report. "He doesn't have the expertise
to make that determination," said the chief, who never saw the
splats himself.
But officials at the Federal Aviation Administration are hesitant
to dismiss the possibility.
"Plane toilets do not flush into the air, but there is a phenomenon
called 'blue ice,' " said Arlene Salac, spokeswoman for the FAA's
eastern regional office. "It involves leakage from the plane's
plumbing."
According to Salac, at high altitudes the leaking material can
freeze and form icicles that hang from an aircraft's underside.
When the plane descends to warmer altitudes, the ice breaks off
and falls to earth. Sometimes it melts, sometimes it doesn't.
The material is called "blue ice" because that's the color of
the sanitizing liquid that swirls about in airliner toilets. Blue
is really a guess, however; no one has ever peeked beneath a soaring
plane to observe the icicles. Less squeamish aviation experts
have suggested other hues.
Contrary to urban legends, falling sky sludge has never claimed
a human life, but property damage has been reported on a number
of occasions.
Last year a Santa Cruz resident sued American Airlines after
a frozen chunk crashed through the skylight of his yacht. He collected
$3,236. And in 2002 US Airways sent a cleaning crew to scrub down
a Pennsylvania home. The airline called it a "good will gesture,"
not an admission of guilt.
The FAA investigates every reported incident, according to Salac.
"We try to find the plane it came from, but we're not always successful,"
she said. "We do a chemical analysis to determine if it really
is blue ice. Sometimes it's not. On one occasion it turned out
to be a flock of Canada geese. A very large flock."
She added that while the chemicals used in aircraft toilets are
not hazardous, handling blue ice material is best avoided, for
obvious reasons.
By yesterday afternoon, the Lakeshore Drive family had already
cleaned most of the material from their property, but a few streaks
and drops remained, including a white splotch across a glass panel
on the front door.
"I scrubbed that with a toilet brush and every cleanser I could
find," the woman said. "Please tell me this came from a sink,
not a toilet."
She went on to describe the splatter zone. "It came across this
way," she said, waving a hand past the front lawn. "It was all
over the bushes, all over the porch, and all over the front of
the house."
"I put my nose to it," a neighbor added. "It smelled like fish."
Most family members were inside when the mystery muck fell from
the sky, but no one heard a sound. They learned something had
happened when they stepped outside.
With reluctance, the family has dismissed the paintball scenario.
Outdoor potted plants and shrubs are streaked and spotted, but
there are no torn leaves, broken twigs, or other damage one would
expect from paintball fire.
Nor do they believe that birds relieved themselves en masse.
"We feed the birds, and I see what they do all the time," the
woman said. "This was not birds." |
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