Clown Without Pity

"No one's reporting this story!" James exclaimed this morning. Well, someone has, because it's in the QCTimes.com website, but we know what he means. The story needs to get out before it's too late. It seems that when Clinton County, Iowa, corrections officer Eric Dau and his wife Sherrise pulled into their mobile-home court late Wednesday night, the headlights of their car picked out a ghastly sight. Nearly 500 14-inch-high, stuffed, ceramic-faced Ronald McDonald dolls with large leather feet were spaced about two or three feet apart in perfectly neat rows in the center of all six roads ahead of them. "It was eerie, frightening," Dau said. "It was like we were seeing things not to be believed." Sherrise thought it might have been a trap to entice women who like dolls out of their cars. According to a neighbor of Dau's, the dolls hadn't been there two hours earlier.

The Daus stopped when a gray mini-van circled in front of them. The occupants were picking up the Ronald McDonald dolls. Dau rushed up. “What’s this all about?” he demanded. Being in uniform, he reasoned that if these were the culprits who set out the dolls, they would take off, or at least would be apprehensive.

“No, they were friendly, a man and woman," Dau said. "They said they lived ‘over there’ – pointing in the direction of a section of the mobile home park. The woman said that they, too, had spotted all those dolls in the road and were picking them up before something happened to them.” Rain was expected during the night. “I did not suspect them of anything. I didn’t even get their names. They asked if we had any children; I told them I had two nieces and they handed me two of the dolls and said I should give them to them. They did not say what they were going to do with all the rest of the dolls. It looked like they were putting them in their van.”

No apparent crime had been committed. Mr. and Mrs. Dau went to bed, disturbed by what he says was not an apparition, but the real thing. Next morning, Dau hurried outside to look at the roads. Not a Ronald McDonald doll was in sight.