On Random Lungs

       Yes, you read the title correctly.  Today’s column is about, of all things, random lungs.
       Those of you residing on the West Coast may have already heard the story.  A lady in Los Angeles was apparently walking in an “unincorporated area” of the county and called in to report what “appeared to be” lungs on the sidewalk.
       Now I must confess to having a few questions regarding this rather unsettling news story.  
       First off, bodily organs are not clean, color-coded, and cleanly labeled the way they are in anatomy textbooks.  Nor do they look nice and neat like they do at the butcher’s counter.  In quite the opposite fashion, most randomly found internal organs are quite a bit of a mess, and to the untrained eye, pretty much indistinguishable without actually poking around or cleaning it up a bit first.
       Secondly, a sidewalk is an awfully random place to find a pair of missing lungs.  I’m sure whomever is missing them is worried to the point they can’t seem to catch their breath.
       Later in the article, it says that the “authorities were trying to determine if [the random sidewalk lungs are] human or animal.”  
       ...because there are so many critters wandering the streets and sidewalks of Los Angeles county whose lung capacities are in the range of humans.  Not only that, but one would hope a simple DNA test or blood type analysis would be able to make a “not human” determination pretty quickly.
       With all these shows on the amazing powers of forensic science and technology, the fact that nobody at the crime scene, nor any medical examiners on site, could say “oh, we don’t need to worry, these are only possum lungs” rather makes me question the capabilities of the police on-site.
       Even if it’s not human lungs, the question still remains as to why on EARTH there was a pair of lungs found just plopped on the sidewalk in Los Angeles to begin with.  I’ve heard of some twisted serial killers in my days of reading their case studies for fun, but discarding random internal organs on busy sidewalks seems to be a slightly obscure practice.
       Not in the City of Lung-Donor Angels, apparently.
       As though that weren’t bad enough, a quote was made by Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Sgt. Panis (of all spokespeople to use in a case of missing body parts) that simply says, “it’s getting weirder.”
       Ya think?