Five small piles of a strange substance sit in the yard of Peter and Maria Rippe’s backyard. It appears to be ice, but has a gelatinous feel.
“Doesn’t that look like the remains of a cooler?” Peter Rippe said, originally thinking someone had just dumped ice in his yard overnight.
The Rippes first made the discovery Tuesday morning. They believe the goo to be a phenomenon known as “star jelly,” which experts say can be caused by remnants of meteors landing on Earth.
Rippe still has other running theories: “Frog regurgitation? Herring regurgitation, who ate the wrong frog? But if it was related to a frog, it must’ve been a mighty big one!”
NBC12 took a small sample of the substance to an agricultural expert in Chesterfield County to take a look under a microscope.
“There’s no cellular structure, no evidence of a living organism,” Mike Likins of the county’s cooperative extension, said.
Likins displayed real world examples of actual star jelly, but believes the Goochland goo isn’t the same, but rather a man-made, water-based polymer.