A Northlander drove 20 minutes into Whangārei before they realised 18 shelled mussels had been placed beneath their windscreen wipers.
The resident, who spoke to the Northern Advocate on the condition of anonymity, made the bizarre discovery on Tuesday morning once they had parked in town.
“Because itwas pouring with rain, I just hopped in the car and drove to town. And then I kept smelling this really weird fishy smell, and went ‘Oh, what on earth is that?’.”
They first thought they were looking at a bunch of leaves on the panel below their windscreen.
“It was all these mussels all in a line right along ... underneath the windscreen, which meant if they had gone rotten, it would have destroyed my air conditioning.
“Whoever did it had to go around the car and purposely put it in a line right across where your air conditioning comes.”
Baffled, and a little unsettled, they ran some errands in town before driving home with them still on their windshield “because there was no way of taking them off, and nowhere to put them”.
The person said they had to laugh driving around town with them on.
“... Whoever put them must have been in the night because, you know, they’d been rained upon for a long time because they’d lost their potent smell.”
Whether someone had intended to sabotage their air conditioning system, it didn’t work, they said.
A Hikurangi resident found 18 mussels lined up on their car on Tuesday morning.
The resident hosed off their car, which no longer smells like low tide, and moved it back up their driveway. They don’t usually park on the road, they explained.
“I’ve just got to see the funny side of it ... what else do you do?”
However, they still wanted answers as to who the culprit was.
The resident planned to spend a few hours scouring CCTV footage in the area. They had not made a report to police.
Brodie Stone covers crime and emergency for the Northern Advocate. She has spent most of her life in Whangārei and is passionate about delving into issues that matter to Northlanders and beyond.
