Strange Rocks Appear Overnight ROCK PICKERS Rock Pickers 26-5-23 Jerry Steinlage has been a rock collector most of his life, also picking up Indian artifacts as he worked on his St. Henry, Ohio, family farm or walked fields and along nearby creeks. Some of the most interesting rocks he's ever seen, suddenly showed up recently on ground he's searched dozens of times before. The rocks are different from anything he's found in the past. He suspects they're pieces of a meteorite that exploded or fragmented over the area in March of 2001. He even thinks he may have heard it, mistaking the noise for thunder. "I'd gone to bed after noticing how clear the sky was that night," he recalls. "Before I went to sleep, though, I heard what I thought was thunder, but didn't give it much more thought than that." A couple of days later, he found several of the funny looking rocks in the snow in an area of his yard. "I started looking around and filled my pockets with rocks of the same material," he says. Then he began to notice a pattern. The odd rocks were in an obvious streak east and west across his field. After putting up markers where he'd found the rocks, he followed the east-west line in both directions onto neighboring farms and found even more of the same type of rock. Over the next few days, he collected more than 1,000 pieces, ranging in size from about 10 lbs. to bits the size of pinheads. The pieces were spread out over two miles from east to west, in a pattern about 300 ft. wide. The pattern runs across three farms and crosses a couple of creeks. "There's a lot more of it out there than I've picked up," he says. The find piqued his curiosity and Steinlage sent some of the rocks to geologists and metallurgists for identification. So far, only one of the scientists has responded. "He said it was likely they weren't rocks, but foundry slag. I worked at the foundry for New Idea for years and I know what foundry slag looks like. This isn't it," he says. "I found what I thought was a meteorite when I was a kid and I still have it. It doesn't look like this rock I found recently," he admits. "But I'd really like to know what I have here. I've researched it on the Internet, but haven't found anything that explains it." While he continues to look for someone who would actually analyze the content of the rocks and perhaps identify the source - or at least help him explain where it came from - Steinlage would like to talk with other people who have found strange rocks. He says he'd even consider buying some artifacts or oddities to add to his collection. Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Jerry Steinlage, 4766 E. Kermer Hoying Rd., St. Henry, Ohio 45883 (ph 419 678-4125; E-mail: steinlagej@bright.net).

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