Lydia Laythe |
Every Valentine’s Day needs chocolate, flowers and…skeletal remains? For sophomores Noah Forrest and Jill Maples, that’s just what happened. After going on a coffee date to celebrate Valentine’s Day, Forrest and Maples found several suspicious-looking bones.
Forrest and Maples decided to go for a walk around the property behind Cathedral Coffee, 7530 N Willamette, Friday afternoon. The couple walked along train tracks and under bridges popular among street artists. When they stopped to admire some street art, Forrest saw something strange.
“Noah picks something up and goes, ‘What’s this? This looks like a tibia,’” Maples said. “And it’s a bone. We didn’t think anything of it. I was like, ‘Noah it’s an animal bone. Whatever.’ Then Noah stopped and he goes, ‘Oh my god, Jill.’ And he leans down and he picks something up and it’s a vertebra.”
Forrest, a biology major, took an anatomy course last semester and said he felt like he was in class when he picked up the bone.
“They were vertebrae and they were thick, super thick and dense (and) heavy,” Forrest said.
Forrest picked up what he thought was a tibia, the larger bone located between the knee and the ankle, and held it to his own leg. The bone was just a little smaller than Forrest’s leg. Maples looked up a picture on her phone of a person holding a human vertebra to see the size difference.
After Forrest and Maples inspected the bones they were convinced the bones were not from the average rodent or dog.
“If it was anything, it’d be a mountain lion or something bigger, like a cougar or a bear,” Forrest said.
Forrest and Maples were unsure enough that they decided to alert the police just in case the bones were human. Maples called the non-emergency police telephone number and was told to wait for an officer at the corner of Edgewater Avenue and Willamette Boulevard.
“When we were waiting for the cop we (began to) really process it and I just started to feel really sick,” Maples said. “I really thought I was just going to lean over and vomit. And Noah started thinking about it and he was like, ‘Oh my God, I touched those….’”
The officer that met them, Christopher Lafrenz, is coincidentally the brother of biology professor at UP, Andrew Lafrenz. Officer Lafrenz sent images of the bones to Nici Vance, the state forensic anthropologist at the Multnomah County Medical Examiner’s Office.
“I did a consultation with the Portland Police Bureau (and determined) they were non-human in origin,” Vance said.
This was a relief to Forrest and Maples who, after the officer left them on Friday, went to Fred Meyer, washed their hands, and bought food to make for a romantic dinner.
“So that was our Valentine’s Day,” Maples said.
