Edna Boling, a groundskeeper employed by the U.S. Forest Service at the Anna Ruby Falls Visitor Center and Picnic Area for eleven years, arrived at work at 7:28 a.m. Thursday morning, April 16, 2026. She parked her 1999 Jeep Cherokee in the staff area behind the visitor center. She collected her litter-picker and trash bag from the staff shed. She proceeded, per her standard Thursday opening routine, to conduct a litter sweep of the public parking lot, moving counter- clockwise from Space 1 in the first row.

She arrived at Space 12, second row, at approximately 7:43 a.m. There, in the exact center of the parking space — the space was, at that moment, vacant — rested a roughly ovoid, dark-gray rock, approximately 4.5 inches at its longest dimension, weighing, per the staff-kitchen scale to which it was briefly removed, 2.3 pounds.

"I thought it was one of those decorative rocks the landscapers use around the information kiosk," Ms. Boling told this reporter Thursday afternoon, sitting at the visitor center's staff table. "But the landscapers have not been here since last October. And those rocks don't walk."

She picked the rock up. She noticed, she said, that it was warm. She noticed it had a small fusion-crust rim along one side, a dark-glossy surface she recognized from the "What Not To Remove From The Forest" poster hanging above the staff sink.

She did not remove it. She bagged it.

The physics

The rock was subsequently examined, Friday afternoon, by Dr. Hyacinth Brill, assistant professor of geology at the University of North Georgia, at the Forest Service's request. Dr. Brill's preliminary petrographic findings — a thin-section examination under a polarizing microscope, a handheld X-ray fluorescence reading, and a comparison against the Ohio State University reference catalog — suggest the rock is an H5 ordinary chondrite consistent with fragments recovered in south-central Ohio following the March 17, 2026 Ohio Fireball. That event, catalogued by the American Meteor Society as Event #2026-1347, produced a ground-track corridor running northeast-to-southwest across Franklin, Pickaway, and Ross counties, Ohio.

Anna Ruby Falls lies approximately 418 miles south-southeast of the southern terminus of the Ohio ground-track corridor.

Dr. Brill, asked Friday afternoon to offer a mechanism by which a fragment of the March 17 fireball could have arrived at Space 12 of the Anna Ruby Falls Visitor Center parking lot on the afternoon of April 15 or the morning of April 16, said: "I cannot."

The Forest Service's account

Per the visitor-center daily log, Space 12 was occupied Tuesday, April 14, from 10:17 a.m. to 1:44 p.m., by a 2022 Toyota Sienna registered to a visitor from Knoxville, Tennessee (her name redacted at this publication's discretion; she is not a party to this matter). After the Sienna departed, Space 12 was photographed at 1:47 p.m. Tuesday by the visitor center's north-facing surveillance camera. The asphalt surface, in that frame, is empty.

At 7:43 a.m. Thursday — 41 hours, 56 minutes after that photograph — the rock was there.

The camera did not record the intervening 41 hours 56 minutes, because the camera is configured to record only when motion is detected within its field of view. No motion was detected. There is, therefore, no footage of the rock's arrival.

Forest Service District Ranger Calvin Pope, reached Friday evening, was asked to comment on the anomaly. His full response was: "It was there on Tuesday. It was not there on Monday. We are not, at this time, speculating further."

A follow-up asking whether the District Ranger's office had considered that the rock might have been, independently, carried in by a visitor and deposited in Space 12 as an act of deliberate misdirection, Ranger Pope said that this possibility had "been fully considered and discarded on Thursday evening." He declined to elaborate.

The rock

The rock is currently held in a locked display case in the staff office of the Anna Ruby Falls Visitor Center. Dr. Brill is scheduled to return Monday to complete cutting of a thin section for full laboratory analysis. The Forest Service has not announced plans for public display. Ms. Boling, asked whether she would like the rock named for her in the event of official classification, said: "No. Name it for the parking space."

A formal classification request to the Meteoritical Society, if pursued, would be filed under the Provisional Name "Anna Ruby Falls 12-2."