Posted on 11/09/2004 9:13:44 AM PST by Born Conservative
Lackawanna County Courthouse jokesters have had a lot of rich material to work with lately: At least 1,000 pounds worth, in fact.
That's the low estimate of how much pigeon dung has been excavated from above a bathroom at the courthouse in the last week. The deposit may weigh a ton, said president of the company cleaning the feces out.
The deposit -- two feet deep -- was in the turret on the northwest corner of the courthouse, above the private bathroom off Judge Vito P. Geroulo's chambers.
Bob Conway, president of Alicon Environmental of Clarks Summit, estimated the dung, which also included what he thought were some dead pigeons, had been accumulating for decades.
"We're not the pigeon experts," Mr. Conway said. "We're just the environmental experts cleaning up the hazard."
Judge Geroulo's third-floor chambers looks like a scene from the movie E.T. -- men in hazard suits and respirators walk in and out of a sealed plastic enclosure outside the bathroom itself, while air is continuously pumped out of giant plastic tubes strung out a window.
Scaffolding is piled in one corner, bags in another.
The bathroom -- circular like the turret -- is about five feet in diameter, with a simple toilet and a sink. But it all was covered in dung and associated debris when a county worker accidentally brought some of it down last week, Mr. Conway said.
The pigeons have been roosting in the turret via a series of small holes, Mr. Conway said. The dung accumulated above the bathroom's plaster ceiling, which at some point was covered with a modern drop ceiling.
Mr. Conway said part of the plaster ceiling had given way onto the top of the drop ceiling, so when the unidentified county worker tried to inspect the area last week -- in response to a complaint from the judge about the smell -- he got a faceful of dung. Mr. Conway said the worker has been examined by a doctor.
Judge Geroulo and his staff have taken over the second-floor chambers of President Judge Chester T. Harhut, who is away at a conference. They may be able to return at the end of the week.
Mr. Conway said he is not sure if the county will ask him to check the other turrets and similar spaces in the courthouse. Neither he nor county spokesman Mike Taluto could estimate how much the work will cost.
Can we house the prisoners from Gitmo there? How about Arafat's corpse?
thag
Wow ... fertilizer!
No-LackaGuano County.
The judge sure knows his sh*t.
Turret Syndrome.
Here come dung judge, here come dung judge.....
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