It seems that we can add another hazard to worry about: poop falling from the sky.
It happened in Yellowknife to the Smith family on Sunday June 24. It also happened in Kelowna B.C. on May 9 and 12. Is this the start of a new trend? Human poop and pee raining down upon us from all the planes traversing the globe? Is it a secret government program to counter global warming or maybe some radical environmental scheme to try and terraform the planet? Maybe it is an opening salvo in the world-wide trade war or a precursor to an alien invasion.
It is possible the poo shower came from a malfunctioning aircraft.
Planes are equipped with holding tanks for human waste and they occasionally leak. The leak makes it outside and freezes into what is euphemistically called blue ice - after the colour of the toilet disinfectant used on flights. As the plane descends into warmer temperatures the blue ice falls off and hurtles earthward. One could also call them frozen sewage comets. They could go through your roof or send you to the great beyond, if they happen to hit you.
What seems odd about the recent occurrences in Yellowknife and B.C. was that they weren’t frozen. So this may be a new unexplained phenomena, one that certainly needs more investigation because who wants wet poop falling on them. Life has enough challenges, we really don’t need any new ones to contend with.
At the moment, it would appear that a person is more likely to have raw sewage douse them from the sky than they are to be hit by a bolt of lightning, struck by a falling meteorite or win the lottery. Not sure what that says about our times.
I remember years ago being in an exploration camp out on the barrens and the subject came up of what might help that vast area of land become more productive. One fellow suggested that what would really help would be to cover the land with a nice thick layer of manure because the soils were so barren and devoid of nutrients and organic material. It is true that what you have for soils in the North is the stuff left behind from the last ice age. Namely rock flour and glacial till. So, a good dose of manure might indeed help.
This wouldn’t be the first time that Yellowknife was bombed. On June 18, 2004 a Canadian Air Force CF-18 fighter jet was coming in for a landing at the airport and a fully functional AIM-7 Sparrow Missile fell off and bounced across the golf course. That caused a considerable amount of excitement. Two days later another CF-18 was heading for the airport but couldn't stick the landing. The pilot ejected and the plane ran off the end of the highway. Once again, the highway was shut down as a team came to Yellowknife from Edmonton to disarm the weapon systems on the plane and remove all the munitions.
All in all, it wasn’t a good few days for Yellowknife, the Air Force or the golf course. At first people said, “Well not many cities in Canada can claim to have been bombed by our own Air Force. That was until a spokesperson admitted that in the last 14 years, five missiles had indeed fallen off of aircraft in Canada. It appeared the nation was dropping more missiles on itself than on enemy terrain.
It didn’t help when another officer suggested that even if the missile had landed downtown and exploded, it wouldn’t have destroyed the whole city. That was comforting to know but he didn’t specify how much it would have destroyed, as we have a rather small downtown.
Getting hit by things falling from the sky is not good and no one wants their headstone to read, “Killed by a missile, which fell off one of our fighter jets,” or “Killed by a chunk of frozen poop which fell off a jumbo jet full of holiday fun seekers.”
This puts a whole new spin on the tale of Chicken Little, because rather unpleasant things really are falling from the sky.