She was found floating in the sea, and the simple young fishermen who rescued her had never seen anything like her in his life – a naked, fair skinned girl, with round green eyes and an expression of ambiguous rapture.
The inhabitants of the remote village of Kalupapi in Indonesia concluded that she was an angel who had tumbled from heaven, and looked after her carefully. It took the less innocent eyes of the local police to explain the truth – that the celestial visitor was in fact an inflatable plastic sex doll.
“Excitement!” ran the headline on one early news report. “Angel in Sulawesi Found Fallen from the Sky, Naked and Weeping”.
The “angel” was discovered on April 12 by a 21-year old fisherman named Pardin just three days after a solar eclipse had excited the superstitious expectations of local people in Central Sulawesi province.
Mr Pardin’s mother clothed the pneumatic assets of her son’s friend in a blouse and trousers, and her head in a hijab. She changed the clothes every day as the “angel” gradually deflated.
Advertisement
A photograph of her seated in a chair was shared widely on social media. There was so much chatter about her that she caught the attention of local police.
“So it was checked by one of our team,” Heru Pramukarno, the police chief, told local journalists. “It was a sex toy.”
The police concluded that rather than falling from the sky she was probably the property of a lonely sailor and had fallen from a passing ship.
After the misunderstanding was revealed the doll was taken to the local police station “for safe keeping”. Superintendent Heru explained: “This doll has been secured in order to avoid problems.”