The article below was published in the daily newspaper Sud-Ouest, France, on October 3, 2007.
Georges Frustier is still struggling to believe what he discovered yesterday morning in the garden of his home in Libourne. "Around 7:30 a.m., I opened the shutters and stumbled upon this." This? It’s a perfectly round black circle, 5.80 meters in diameter and 30 centimeters wide, imprinted on his lawn, right next to his terrace. "I got closer. Around it, there were no other marks. It had no smell, didn’t smell like oil, and wasn’t sticky," says Georges Frustier with a smile.
The retiree then plucked a piece of grass and commented, holding up the evidence: "It looks like thousands of tiny microscopic black grains." "It’s crazy!" adds his wife, Pierrette, circling the mysterious mark and searching in vain for a rational explanation. A prank? "We found no footprints, no vehicle tracks. The house is very isolated." During the night, no noise had woken them up. "We saw nothing, heard nothing. They didn’t leave a business card!" jokes Georges Frustier.
The question that puzzled everyone yesterday was understanding why the mark formed a perfect circle. "Could there be a mark or a hole in the middle of this circle?" wondered one of the three police officers dispatched to the scene in the afternoon. "It’s strange. It looks like tiny mushrooms, bacteria. In any case, it’s organic…," commented another.
The forensic identification service arrived yesterday morning to collect samples of the black substance. However, no investigation will be opened, and the substance will not be analyzed, as no crime or offense has been committed. "That won’t stop us from having to mow the lawn," concludes Pierrette Frustier.
