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Sun 23 Mar, 2003 12:21 pm
A funny thing happened to me this morning. On Thursday, I had bought a cantaloupe. Since it was not completely ripe, I left it on my kitchen counter to ripen.
Early this morning, I heard my husband yelling, "take a look at this". It seems that a plume of white, slightly thickened foam, about 1" wide, and 4" long had come out of the stem end of the cantaloupe.
I was very concerned. I had never seen anything like this. I had just read an article about concern about terrorists contaminating food supplies. Hey, it could have been some gas that had been produced by the melon, but it looked too unusual, so I didn't want to ignore it.
I brought it to the police station. The policeman in charge looked at it, and told me to bring it back to the store. I told him that I was not concerned about the money I had paid for it, but was concerned about the substance.
He refused to take the melon, and said that he would not send it to the lab.
I brought it back to the store, and asked for the produce manager. He said that in all his years, he had never seen anything like it before. He filled out an incident report, and said that the melon would go to "quality control".
I thought about it for awhile. Then I spoke to my brother. He suggested that I call the F.B.I., "just in case", which I did. They took down the information, and asked me for the location of the melon, which I told them.
I was very annoyed by the way that I was treated by the police. I think that it is up to citizens to report anything unusual during these turbulent times. It was probably nothing, but who knows?
What do YOU think? Have you ever had such an experience with a cantaloupe like that?
Never, ever Phoenix have I seen a cantaloupe do anything like that. Usually they just get soggy when the are over ripe.. Your brother was right to tell you to call the FBI. Sheesh you would think after all the terrorist activity in the past couple of years and with the invasion of Iraq that the police would have been more concerned.
2003 Florida Plant Disease - Cantaloupe
Joanne- That was the point. The melon was NOT overripe. In fact, today it was just about perfect. I was planning to put it into the frig this morning.
I don't know what to think about this. All I know, is that a lot of problems occurred (like Mohammad Atta) because of the laxness of law enforcement. I was really pissed that the police would not even consider looking into it!
Thanks for the link. I could not find anything that remotely resembled what happened to my cantaloupe!
I'm not sure if this'll make you feel any better, but I'm pretty sure it's an insect infestation.
There are a few insects that lay there eggs in various produce. The secretion is "foam-like", and when it hatches it expands.
Nasty,.but nature.
I'll try to find some more specific information.
Great JerryR that does make sense and I hope that is all it was.
Thanks! If you could find a link, it would be very appreciated!
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