Who Spilled the Beans

A Little Backstory

Ohio State is a fairly large campus, which means getting from point A to point B can involve quite a bit of walking. A while ago I developed this habit of finding things on the ground while walking to class, to dinner, to see friends, etc. My friends often make fun of me for picking up random things or just for always finding weird things in general. I never let this get me down because I think I find some really interesting stuff. Today I will begin sharing some of the things I find, along with a little story about each item/items. To begin, here is one of my all time favorites:

Beans!

I noticed these beans about a week and a half ago laying on the ground just off the sidewalk. That day it was very cold out and it had just started snowing, so I hadn't thought to stop and take a picture. Of course, when I came home and told my friends they all thought I was crazy. "What do you mean there's just a big pile of beans next to the psych. building?" they asked, "You're crazy, I'm not going out in this weather to look at some stupid beans!" they told me.
Of course, to my dismay, It snowed that night. Several inches. That snow didn't melt until this Monday, so that day I took a picture and sent it to everyone who had doubted me. They weren't really all that impressed as it was just a pile of beans.

So What Happened?

Wouldn't I like to know. I know there isn't much for scale in the picture, but there is quite a bit of beans there. My first assumption was that they were someone's baked beans they had brought in a crockpot for some sort of gathering. I like to think they got there in a similar fashion as that episode of The Office when Kevin spills his famous chili.

Source
I did end up getting one of my friends to see the beans in person yesterday. She suggested they looked more like coffee beans than baked beans. They were on the ground for a few days, then covered in snow, then thawed out, then likely refroze yesterday as the temperature dropped back below freezing, so who knows what they originally looked like. What we do know, however, is that nobody has cleaned them up and nobody seems to have much of an interest in cleaning them up any time soon. Not even the squirrels (college squirrels, not regular ones) or the birds will touch them, so maybe something is wrong with them. No matter what the circumstances were, I do hope that whoever dropped these beans wasn't too heartbroken, or that they at least had a plan b for the potluck.