Status: Seems to be a prank
Brian Geist was sitting at home on New Year's Eve enjoying some hazelnuts. But there was a strange surprise in one of them: a condom. As his wife reported to the
Glenwood Springs Post Independent (may require registration):
"My husband cracked open a hazelnut and a condom popped out. He couldn't believe it. He just sort of sat there and stared at it and he said, 'You wouldn't believe what I found in this nut," Geist said Tuesday. She assumed he might have been talking about a bug. But it turned out to be a bright-yellow condom, still rolled up, she said.
The nuts were bought at a local Wal-Mart Supercenter. The Wal-Mart spokesperson had no clue what to make of the incident. Meanwhile, the police chief noted that he was aware of condoms being sold inside plastic walnuts, though the nut in this case wasn't plastic. The Wal-Mart spokesperson, and a pr representative for the nut company both
"expressed surprise at a condom being able to fit into the relatively small shell of a hazelnut. Geist agreed it was a tight fit. She said her husband speculates that the shell had been cut in half and glued back together. Meisner [the police chief], who didn't see signs of sawing or gluing, said he doesn't doubt the Geists' story. Geist said it's not something she could have concocted if she tried. 'It's so bizarre, I'm not clever enough to make up something that crazy,' she said."
I don't suppose there's any way of getting a condom inside a hazelnut without breaking the nut open first. So if it was a prank, someone went to quite a bit of trouble to pull it off. And the Geists aren't threatening to sue, so it's hard to see what motive they would have for making up the story. (Unless they just wanted to get their name in the paper.) Very weird. Maybe a mad scientist has genetically engineered condom-growing nuts.
Comments
I am pretty sure I would not have continued eating the nuts after finding a condom in one of them.
The story "seems" legit, though I do wonder who called the media
They're a novelty item called "Rubber tree nuts", and you can find them in novelty shops at various tourist traps. (At least you can here in NC.)
A quick web page look-up:http://waynesword.palomar.edu/pldec95.htm
Apparently the hazelnut is cut open and an industrial "finger cots" is put inside and the nutshell is glued shut.
Finger cots look like condoms, but are used to protect either your fingers, or items being handled with you fingers. (a sample site: http://www.fingercots.net )
Anyway, continuing... my guess is that someone slipped one or more of these into the bulk nut bin at Walmart as a prank.
A nutshell with a wadded-up finger cot inside ... now THAT'S what I call a fine souvenir. A real laff riot, no?
It's way funnier to watch people open them... the prankster missed out!