The Mystery Names Inside the Coconut

And from the Newburyport (Massachusetts) Daily News comes this story, Man Seeks to Solve Mystery of the Names in the Coconut. Seems this guy named Tom Small of Salisbury, MA, found a coconut washed up on a nearby beach. The coconut appeared to have been opened and then resealed with tinfoil and wax.

. . . Small, 59, brought the coconut to his brother's house, where they told him to forget it and that his story sounded as "nutty" as his coconut. But Small could not put the treasure out of his mind and decided instead to find out what was inside. Using a hammer, Small and his friends cracked it open, spilling a thick liquid onto the ground and revealing a series of small notes. A brown paper list of names was fused to the inside. Other tiny slips of paper lined the interior of the nut, also covered in names. "The names all sound Spanish," Small said noting the last names are Lopez, Pena, Romero and Rivera. "I would like to think the coconut came here from a far away island where it is warm all the time, but I bet it is from upriver, from Lowell or Lawrence." . . . .

The article goes on to say that he signed his own name to the list and re-sealed it and plans to throw it back into the deep blue sea this summer when he goes deep sea fishing.

One sure hopes he at least posts the names on the Web somewhere!

Coconuts: Delicious, or Deadly?

Calvin Godfrey does not like coconuts.

When I first arrived in Miami, I was happy about all the coconuts. I bought a machete and looked forward to lavish coconut-splitting parties, involving rivers of rum and armies of women. The day never came. And now I hate the coconuts. They’re everywhere. And frankly, I’m beginning to think they’re a danger to us all. I mean, they do just fall. You know. They might just fall on your head. They probably already have. . . .

Full story available here. What's cool is that the article cites this blog!

Lethal Yellowing

The coconut palm tree disease called "lethal yellowing" is hitting palms in Florida, according to this report.

The homeowner of one of the coconut palms affected by lethal yellowing didn't even know it was a potential threat until it was too late.

"The guy from the city said we had lethal yellowing and we're taking it down, so I said okay. I didn't want it to spread to all the other ones on the property," said Mary Beth Ross.

The tree disease is spread by a small insect called the leaf hopper. It doesn't take many of them to infect a tree and once it happens there's no hope.

Nearly 200 trees in Naples alone have had to be taken down because of lethal yellowing in the last couple years.

The Case of the Mysterious Coconut

Every year for literally 50 years, Ed Clinch received a mysterious coconut in the mail, "always wearing a blond wig, googly eyes and lipstick." He died in 1997, and one of the same coconuts appeared on his grave that year. He died without ever learning who was sending him the coconuts.

Intrepid reporters at the Peoria Journal Star finally figured out the whodunit in December. Read more about the story here.

Protestor detained in Miami after picking up a coconut

There's a story in the November 19th edition of the Palm Beach Post of police, protestors, and a coconut:

Jared Lodge had never seen a coconut in his life.

The 20-year-old from St. Paul, Minn., was walking downtown Wednesday along East Flagler Street when he spotted his coconut. He picked it up and started walking as he showed his friends.

For about 20 minutes, Lodge and his friends were searched and patted down by police.

"They said it was a missile that I could throw at them," Lodge said. "They told me I was causing a ruckus."

Across the street, a chant of "let them go" could be heard coming from a group of steelworkers and other AFL-CIO members waiting to go into a rally at the Gusman Theater.