Georgia Cop Solves Severed Thumb Mystery, Squeezes The ‘Rascal’

PUTNAM COUNTY, GA — James Ellis was plenty freaked out when he found what looked to be a severed human thumb on his Putnam County lawn Monday. The fingernail was intact, it was bloody-looking and appeared to have a piece of bone sticking out. It was creepy as can be.

So Ellis, 64, did what you’d probably do if you found the disgusting thing on your property. He called the county sheriff, who lives not far away, and asked him to get the thing off his lawn.

It sure looked like the real thing, Sheriff Howard Sills and a deputy deduced, reporting a “found body part.”

“Is it human?” they wondered, putting it in a paper sack, according to an account of the mystery by The Telegraph newspaper in Macon.

But things didn’t add up. For one thing, Sills told the newspaper, “it was rather conspicuous, kind of sitting in the middle of the lawn.”

So the crime fighters took a closer look under a microscope. The pores didn't look right. Sills had never seen anything like it on a human thumb. Also, what looked like blood was bright red, though the rest of the thumb looked like it had been cut off for days. The blood would have dried to a crusty brown.

There was only one thing left to do.

“I said, ‘Well, let me squeeze this rascal,’ ” Sills told the newspaper.

Sure enough, it was a professionally made rubber finger, the kind used as a prop in movies.

Now the only mystery is how it ended up on Ellis’ lawn.

Sills has a theory.

“I’m wondering if somebody put it there as a joke,” he said.

Photos via Putnam County Sheriff’s Office