Monday, August 20, 2007

A mystery....in two parts!

A mystery will be posed today, and solved tomorrow.

My wife and I get home, after having gone to see a play.

On driving up, we see in the driveway...a rather large end of cucumber, fresh, wasn't there when we left three hours earlier.

On the counter inside: An empty olive jar (expensive olives), and lots of cucumber pieces here and there. Another large cucumber end over by the fireplace. One son is gone to the lake for two nights, and so can't be implicated. Other son, Kevin....asleep, or pretending to be.

I get up in the morning, get my tea and the Sunday paper, and go out to back deck to read and watch the hummingbirds (we have a dozen or more hummingbirds that fight for sugar water supremacy from our feeders. extremely entertaining)

When I open the back door, I am met with this scene: broken window, glass everywhere, and two strange puddles, with what appears to be chopped onions or some other small white cubes of foodstuff in the puddles.

I try to piece this together. Out in the middle of the deck, there is this puddle:






















I have drawn lines to help you see the splash pattern, and a circle to call attention to the white foodstuff cubes.

Now, there is also the broken window, which in terms of direction lies exactly at the midpoint of the splash pattern in the previous photo. Some[thing] bounced, or was launched, from the splash in the previous photo. And it was launched with such velocity that it not only broke the window, but also carved out a fresh gouge 1/2" into the wood window frame (circled). Had this object, whatever it was, not hit the wood it would clearly have gone through the next window as well. It had to be heavy, have a sharp edge, and be travelling fast.






















Now, beneath the window there was another puddle. No splash pattern, just a puddle. Same white foodstuff cubes. Looks like this:
















So, here's my question, for all you "Children of the Cheese": WTF? What happened here? A slushy ice ball from the neighbors house, bounced once and hit the window? An alien invasion?

The answer: tomorrow here at KPC. Commenter who comes closest to the correct answer (and my judgement on that is FINAL, btw) gets a free "Munger 4 NC Gov" stainless steel coffee mug! mailed to the address they provide.

(A note: my son Kevin has not told me the answer, so I don't know either. And I am very interested to find out, so that I can kill him)

6 comments:

Angus said...

(1) so after the oracle outed you, now you claim to be drinking tea? really, tea?? that's not going to help your image.

(2) don't forget the strictures of the Geneva convention when getting the answer out of the elder younger munger.

Nathanael D Snow said...

I did a little investigation, but "Cucumber Olive Projectile" didn't produce any useful leads on google.

Anonymous said...

Do you have an idea of the distribution that generated the data (some whitestuff cubes). If you give me that information, I'm sure I can figure it out.

Tommy the "post Essex Summer School Geek" Englishman (TM)

Dirty Davey said...

It was not necessarily something sharp; it may have propelled the edge of a piece of broken glass into the window frame.

I'm inclined to think a frozen lump of something hit, as a ball with a bat; part hits the window, falls, melts. Part falls on the deck, producing puddle, with some ice bits dispersing and causing the "splash"?

Angus said...

Davey you may be on to something. I have personally seen those Munger boys play wiffle ball with baked potatoes, so its clearly possible!!

Michael Munger said...

My God, that's true. Wiffle with baked potatoes. That actually happened. I had forgotten.

Wow. Wait until they get to graduate school. So many very strange memories waiting to be made.