Apparently, the chicken McNuggets aren’t the only suspicious packages at McDonald’s.
On Saturday afternoon, MoCo police officers hit the McDonald’s on Colesville Road and Second Avenue to investigate an unusual bundle left unattended and tucked beneath a corner booth.
The bundle was a chimera of spare parts: the side of a video camera, a small boom-box radio, a cell phone and protruding wires, slammed together with gray duct tape.
One officer stared down at the bundle from four feet away, not sure of what to make of it. Employees and onlookers peeked around her shoulders, some nervous, most curious.
“That ain’t no bomb!” one diner huffed from behind his Big Mac box. “That’s just his stuff,” he said, pointing to another man on line at the counter.
Relief came across the officer’s face. Apparently, she recognized the bundle’s bearer from the neighborhood.
“He’s just a little … ,” she said, wriggling her fingers near her left temple. “You know, a little ….”
Diners instantly returned to their hamburgers. An employee went back to emptying a trash bin.
Fifteen minutes after the false alarm, the bundle’s owner was seen wandering in front of the McDonald’s, exploring newspaper boxes and trash cans along Colesville Road.
The duct-taped bundle was cradled in his arms.
Read 
What the hell are they building now? Learn more from 
Boxed wines and rosés are back in vogue. Just ask The Penguin's sommeliers.
It’s been a slow week. Or a slow month, really. Can’t wait for The Government to come back from recess in September so there will be news again.
Dude, it was completely nuts in The Penguin newsroom last week, and I predict more of the same for the rest of August. News never rests.
Enjoy your summer recess, Dan!
You wrote a story about someone misplacing a box at McDonald’s . . .
I wrote a story about a suspicious package left in a crowded restaurant:
I would hope that other Silver Springers would be equally aware of their surroundings in this post-9/11 world. Just today, a suspicious package was reported on a Glenmont-bound Red Line train. What if the concerned citizen who phoned police decided otherwise? And what if that package was more than just a misplaced box, as you say?
I’d rather err on the side of caution than just err.
[...] crosswalk next to the McDonald’s restaurant on Colesville Road at Second Avenue will be off-limits to pedestrians starting Monday, [...]