Jan Elliott was lying on her couch in Newcastle on Sunday evening, contemplating a quick nap, when something smacked the window just above her head.
Then came another — the whack hard enough to shake the glass.
Elliott looked outside but couldn't see anything. Her son grabbed a flashlight and went looking, too.
Eventually, they peered down into the window well.
There, at the bottom, was a hot dog.
Someone, it appeared, was driving through this quiet northeastern Wyoming town launching wieners at people's homes — and Elliott's house wasn't the only target.
Hot Dog Hurlers
Elliott figures it was sometime around 7 or 7:30 p.m. when the hot dog struck her Cambria Street home.
She called Newcastle Police's non-emergency line to report the strange incident and quickly learned hers apparently wasn't the first house to be wienered that night.
"Oh, OK, well now they're on Cambria" responded the dispatcher, Elliott recalled.
People along nearby Wood Street had already been calling, she said.
Elliott said she was told police received six or seven reports involving hot dogs thrown at homes.
Newcastle Police Chief Derek Thompson did not return Cowboy State Daily's request for comment Monday, so the number of reports could not be independently confirmed.
Neither could the identity of the hot dog hurlers.
But word of their exploits didn't stay confined to Wood and Cambria streets for long.
'Wood St. Weiners'
Elliott took to a Newcastle community Facebook page that evening with a warning.
"The hot dog hurlers are on the loose tonight," she wrote.
Newcastle responded appropriately.
"The Wood St. Weiners," one commenter dubbed them.
Another observed that hot dogs must be cheaper than toilet paper, and depending on the quality of the ammunition, they may be right.
The federal government, as it happens, keeps tabs on such things.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the average price of frankfurters at about $3.98 per pound. At the grocery store, basic franks can be found for around $1 for a package, while premium all-beef varieties approach $7.
Bill Feaster had only one request if the hurlers made it to his place.
Ketchup and mustard, please.
Around Town
Newcastle has about 3,300 people, and by the next day, the flying frankfurters had become a topic of conversation beyond the neighborhood.
Amy Hawley, who works at Decker's Market, heard rumblings about it by Monday.
"All I heard was from other customers at my job that they had seen them as well," Hawley told Cowboy State Daily.
The reported targets are clustered in an older Newcastle neighborhood where Wood and Cambria streets run only blocks apart.
Modest homes, gravel driveways and fenced yards hug narrow streets beneath mature trees and overhead utility lines — putting many front yards and windows well within hot-dog-hurling distance of the road.
The next morning, Elliott found an empty hot dog package in the road in front of her house.
She believes the frankfurter in her window well might have been the last of the pack.
If so, she said she thinks the spree ended when the hurlers ran out of meat.
What About The Dogs?
Not everyone viewed the mystery meat entirely as a joke.
Ted Penfield's first thought was about the neighborhood's four-legged residents.
"I hope they're not poisoning dogs," he said.
His wife, Pamela, hadn't found any hot dogs in their yard and learned about the hurlers through Elliott. Still, she had the same concern.
"That's great as long as they're not putting nothing nasty inside of them and poisoning my dogs," she said.
Had the hot dog hurlers struck the Penfield house, Pamela figures there was a good chance she would have known.
"I've got a pack of dogs, so they would all be barking," she said.
There has been no indication the hot dogs contained anything harmful.
Is Hurling A Hot Dog Illegal?
Then there is the legal question of Newcastle's municipal code.
Cowboy State Daily found no provision specifically addressing the unauthorized hurling of processed meat products at private residences.
That does not necessarily mean the hot dog hurlers were operating within the law. Depending on what happened, broader ordinances could potentially apply.
Thompson's lack of response left that question unanswered Tuesday, along with whether anyone could actually be cited if caught with a package of franks and a good throwing arm.
For Elliott, though, the whole episode seemed more mischievous than malicious.
She suspects the culprits were probably young people looking for something to do.
There's no evidence establishing that — the hot dog hurlers could just as easily be adults with a surplus of processed meat — but the theory apparently occurred to other Newcastle residents, too.
As word spread Sunday night, Elliott said some parents started checking on their teenagers.
"Hey, where are you? What are you doing?" she recalled people asking.
Something To Do
“If that’s the worst thing they’re doing, I’m OK with it,” Elliott said. “But find something better to do.”
There are city parks and playgrounds, a skate park, and basketball courts. There’s an indoor pool, after-school programs, and the Dogie Theatre still showing movies downtown.
Elliott doesn’t know who did it — or whether they were teenagers at all, but if she found out her own kids were involved, she said there would definitely be a conversation about who paid for the hot dogs.
As for the frankfurter that rattled Elliott's window, it did not go to waste.
She eventually climbed down and retrieved it from the window well because she didn't want an animal going after it and becoming trapped.
By then, ants had discovered it.
Elliott washed it off, cut it into four pieces, and fed it to her dogs.
Kolby Fedore can be reached at kolby@cowboystatedaily.com.
