Mystery as greenish-yellow goo falls from the sky in New York
Homes along Washington Highway and Berryman Drive are now coated in yellow or green icicles. Walls and pavements are splashed with a bizarre deep brown substance.
Neighbours said the mystery substance appeared between the hours of 9am and midnight on Tuesday.
Goo-ross! Snow with a strange greenish-yellow cast to it is seen piled outside the door of a home in Snyder, New York
Mellow yellow: Unnaturally coloured icicles hang from the roof of another house. The FAA has ruled out 'blue ice' - frozen human excrement falling from passing airplanes
The colour and texture of the goo immediately sparked fears of 'blue ice' - that is, frozen human excrement known to fall from airplanes passing overhead, ABC News reported.
However the FAA swiftly launched an investigation and discarded that possibility.
A spokesman told ABC: 'The local flight standards inspectors investigated the situation and determined it was not from an aircraft.'
So what could it be?
The town waste engineer said they are looking in to it - and have already come across some rather distasteful theories.
Have a nice drip: More strangely-coloured goo - but where did it come from?
I'm not lovin' it: One woman has theorised that the goo could be from birds eating fast food litter - such as leftover McDonald's French fries
'We received a call this morning from a woman who owns a house on the same street, Washington Highway. She gave us her explanation because it happened to her last year,' Lisa Kistner, a spokesman for the Amherst Town Supervisor's Office, told ABC.
'She said it's actually because the seagulls eat fast food at McDonald's, which upsets their digestive tract,' Ms Kistner explained.
The seagulls were eating leftover French fries out of paper bags discarded in the parking lots, the woman apparently claimed.
For the birds: Ornithologists at Cornell agree the goo could be bird droppings... but scientists are still doing tests
And, Ms Kistner said, as soon as the woman convinced fast food restaurants to clean up the rubbish in their parking lots, she no longer had that problem.
'She suggested that someone check the fast food parking lots because that is probably the root cause of this issue,' Ms Kistner said.
The woman's bizarre account may not be that far enough. Bird experts who have examined images of the goo actually agree they do resemble bird droppings - though seagulls were ruled innocent.
Instead, according to Cornell's Lab of Ornithology, the droppings may be from a large flock of birds often found in upstate New York in January - European starlings.
But with the town's engineers still doing tests, locals will, for now, simply have to wait a bit longer - and perhaps invest in a good umbrella or two.
Jan. 21, 2011