Mystery Meat

One afternoon last week, I was working in our upstairs home office, with Scout at my feet, when I was startled to hear a loud thump. Scout and I looked at each other, thinking, "What was that?!" We have mourning doves bounce off our windows occasionally with a similar sound, but this thump sounded like it had originated from the front door. It could have been a delivery person dropping a package on our front porch, but Scout normally barks when he hears one coming and he was being quiet. Thinking I should investigate, I went down the stairs far enough to look out the transom window above the door. I didn't see a FedEx or UPS truck idling out front, so I went back to work.

A couple of hours later, I opened the front door to take Scout out for his walk and saw through the glass storm door that there was something unusual sitting on the porch. When I opened the storm door, Scout scooted out ahead of me to see what it was. I yelled at him to leave it and then bent close to see for myself. It was a piece of frozen meat. It was about the size of a pork chop but looked more like a flattened chicken thigh without the skin. I picked it up to keep it away from Scout and noted that it must have been frozen before it landed on the porch, or it would have left a wet mark. I looked up at the transom window and saw a fresh smudge on the glass next to the wreath we hang up there every Christmas. Someone had thrown a frozen piece of meat at our window!

Have you ever heard of such a thing? It's now almost a week later and I have told a number of people this story. No one has a plausible explanation.