The mystery of who dumped hundreds of pounds of pasta in a wooded area of New Jersey has reportedly been solved.
Middlesex County residents said the noodles came from an Old Bridge home that is up for sale.
A neighbor told WNBC that a military veteran who is moving out of the house after the death of his mother seemingly found a stockpile of old food there.
“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 the station, saying it’s generational.
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Hundreds of pounds of pasta were dumped in Old Bridge. ( Nina Jochnowitz for Old Bridge via Facebook)
He noted that his grandparents always had a cupboard full of cans and pasta “just to be safe.”
“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,” Rost added.
Pictures of the pasta – which has since been hauled away from the banks of the Iresick Brook, with the Department of Environmental Protection reporting no harm – went viral on social media this week.
The pasta appeared wet because of recent rainfall. (Nina Jochnowitz for Old Bridge via Facebook)
There were likely about 200 pounds of alphabet noodles and spaghetti there, dumped across roughly 25 feet of woodland.
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The pasta appeared wet following heavy rains over the weekend.
Nina Jochnowitz was walking through a creek near Veterans Park in Old Bridge, New Jersey, when she came across heaps of cooked pasta. (Nina Jochnowitz for Old Bridge via Facebook)
“You might say, ‘Who cares about pasta?’ But pasta has a pH level that will impact the water stream,” Nina Jochnowitz, who posted the photos, had told The Philadelphia Inquirer on Wednesday.
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“That water stream is important to clean up, because it feeds into the town’s water supply. . . . It was one of the fastest cleanups I’ve ever seen here,” she remarked.
Pasta and other refined carbohydrate foods are acid-forming.
Fox News’ Andrea Vacchiano contributed to this report.
