‘Alien’ ice disrupts Memorial Day weekend barbecue
As Dr. Peter Halper was preparing to enjoy a Memorial Day weekend barbecue with his in-laws on Ram Island Saturday, there was suddenly a loud noise of something substantial — and scary — falling through the trees and landing on the lawn 20 feet from where the party had gathered for lunch.
Approaching the drop site, Dr. Halper found what he described as a soccer ball-sized lump of yellow ice.
It was “yellowish, mottled, marbled,” he said. Although a visitor to the Island, he assumed it was “not supposed to be a normal occurrence.”
Pieces of the ice ball are in the freezer as the family waits for word from the Federal Aviation Administration about just what it might be.
“We’d love to have it analyzed — it could be alien herpes,” Dr. Halper told the Reporter.
James Ciccone, an inspector with the FAA, is checking air traffic data and radar to determine whether the ice came from a plane.
Dr. Halper’s father-in-law, James Murphy, called Shelter Island Police at 12:49 p.m. and Officer Terrence Legrady was dispatched to the scene.
He got there to find a piece of the ice he described as about the size of a baseball, since the entire piece had been taken apart. That sent him to the FAA with an inquiry.
It’s not what you might imagine yellow ice dropped from the sky to be — the contents of an airplane lavatory, Officer Legrady said. That, he learned, would have been blue in color. And this ice had an ammonia-like smell, the officer added. Its yellow color also indicated it came from an international flight, according to preliminary information he got from the FAA.
Yellow ice could be the result of condensation on the plane that froze and dropped. Or it could be some sort of chemical combination.
“It’s not something that happens every day,” Officer Legrady said, noting he’s never seen anything like it in his 16 years on the job.
When the FAA determines its nature and can identify the plane from which it dropped, Dr. Halper thinks he and the others should at least get expedited boarding passes for their plane travel for the rest of their lives.
