DARWIN, Australia - It seemed like a scene out of a modern-day, pheromone-charged retelling of one of Alfred Hitchcock's classic tales of suspense: Residents of a rural neighborhood outside Darwin, in the northern territory of Australia, were amused and befuddled when they found about 30 sex toys lying next to the road late last week.
The plot thickened eerily when some of the largest of the dildos, many of them apparently used, disappeared within 24 hours as mysteriously as they had appeared.
"It's a real mystery," Laurelle Bates told Northern Territory News. "We have no idea where they came from."
Bates and fellow resident Robert Johns discovered the phallic toys as they left for work Friday morning.
Theories about the sudden latex invasion range from "an elaborate practical joke" to "they must have fallen off the back of a delivery truck." Some in the neighborhood are inclined to believe the local garbage collectors got careless while retrieving the neighborhood's trash.
Regardless whence the devices came, someone in the area reacted quickly, marking the street sign at a nearby intersection with a new name: Dildo Boulevard.
Most of the Aussie locals got a kick out of the unusual roadside landscaping.
"I don't know where they came from. This is the strangest thing," resident Camilla Cappa told the Northern Territory News. "There were all different kinds. Some were different colors. One was like a banana. I had a child in the car. He just thought they were firecrackers.
"I just cracked up [about the street sign]," she added. "It was very entertaining."
Some of the toys remained along the roadway on Monday, and Cappa had thoughts about that, as well.
"Who is going to pick them up?" she asked with a wink. "If you pick them up, you claim ownership. If you own them, you're desperate."
