After an impastable discovery last week, the macaroni mystery has been resolved.
Last week, baffled New Jersey residents found hundreds of pounds of cooked pasta noodles along a creek bed in a wooded area in the town of Old Bridge. Now, after the images went viral online, the truth has come to light.
Neighbors in the Middlesex County town deduced that the piles of noodles came from a nearby house that had been put up for sale after the owner’s death. The homeowner’s son was cleaning out the property and found a large supply of expired groceries.
He discarded the the old dried pasta in the woods and due to heavy rain in the area last weekend the noodles became waterlogged and appeared to have been cooked.
“I mean, I really feel like he was just trying to clear out his parents’ house and they were probably stocked up from COVID,” neighbor Keith Rost told NBC.
On April 28, Nina Jochnowitz, a community leader, first shared a Facebook post with the images of the mysterious pasta piles. In her post, Jochnowitz estimated that there had to be more than 500 pounds of pasta dumped by the stream in Old Bridge — which she tells PEOPLE “would be in better shape if the present administration, which has refused bulk garbage collection, would have it.”
Soon after her post, and after she reported the ordeal to the town, Jochnowitz detailed that the area’s Public Works department cleared the pasta from the area.
The neighboring residents are grateful for the prompt response. “I just moved in right next door so that would have been a big mess to start cleaning all the flies in the house, maggots,” said Rost.
“The township heard or read the comments and responded by doing a rapid cleanup of the river basin and pasta dump. As my friend called it a ‘Mission Impastable!!!’ “ Jochnowitz wrote on Facebook. “They also cleaned out all the garbage tossed in the basin. Thank you Kasey and the entire crew of Public Works!”
The truth of “Mission Impastable” is less thrilling than some of the hilarious theories that flooded social media the past week.
“Is it possible that someone might have just tripped and their pocket spaghetti fell out?” one user wrote on Reddit, as another said, “It was pasta expiration date.”
Another user suggested that the mess could be the fault of Strega Nona — the subject of the children’s book written and illustrated by Tomie dePaola — and her helper, Big Anthony, who causes her magic pasta pot to create an overabundance of pasta that nearly floods an entire town.
“No, it’s clearly Big Anthony. Strega Nona would NEVER let pasta go to waste like that,” one person commented in response.
