In a case of carbo-loading gone terribly, terribly wrong, the plot of the 1975 children’s book Strega Nona recently played out in one New Jersey town, after roughly 500 pounds of cooked spaghetti were discovered sitting in the middle of a wooded area.
This seemingly im-pasta-ble tale began last week when Old Bridge, New Jersey community leader Nina Jochnowitz, said she received a phone call from a local woman reporting that a pile of pasta had been left adjacent to a nearby stream.
Yet, upon arriving at the scene of the crime, Jochnowitz found herself in for a big-oli surprise – “There was literally 25 feet of pasta that had been dumped,” she later told the New York Times of her discovery, one she quickly recounted in a politically-charged post shared to a local parents’ Facebook group.
someone very mysteriously dumped 3-400 pounds of pasta in the woods in old bridge, nj …… i need to know everything pic.twitter.com/z6D1e7u2JJ
— pasta girl (@worrystonee) May 2, 2023
“The Mayor and his posse continue to ignore the Sixth Ward,” penned Jochnowitz, who had previously made an unsuccessful bid for local office.
“No surprise when we see the dumping of construction and other garbage spewed in all of the neighborhoods,” she continued. “This week, there was a new type of dumping, of excessive food, PASTA.”
Alongside sharing several snaps of the pasta pile – one which featured a mixture of spaghetti, alphabet noodles, and macaroni – Jochnowitz then detailed the carb-filled dump’s impressive specs.
“A good Estimate is more than 500 pounds of pasta dumped adjacent to the streams intersecting with Hilliard and Mim,” she elaborated.
Though Jochnowitz’s post may have only garnered one single like on the Old Bridge Parents 2.0 Facebook Group, the story quickly attracted viral attention and several news stories centered around two questions – “What the hell” and “Who would do this?”
No suspect has been publicly named, however, Jochnowitz’ alleged that she knows exactly who is behind this incredibly fu-silly act.
“I only know that it was not a business,” she told the New York Times, elaborating that the perp “was a private residence” and that she “was in conversation with the family via an individual who knows the family.”
“My hope is that whoever did it is not eating as many carbs as they cooked,” she concluded.
Strega Nona author Tomie dePaola was not available for comment on this story – only partially because he’s dead.
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