Mystery Slime

While I was at a client's house on the Lake Sammamish beachfront on January 24, I was pruning rose bushes and noticed a weird clear goop hanging off the plants. It had the viscosity of runny snot, and when I inspected it closely, I could see lots of whitish specks suspended in the snot-gel. As I was pruning, this substance got all over me, and it felt like I had snot all over my skin and clothes. Pretty gross, right? But so fascinating.

I tried to guess what it could possibly be. A fungus? A collection of bacteria? Something produced by an insect or a frog? Is it even life? At the same time that I discovered all this mystery goop, the whole property was swarming with its annual infestation of non-biting midges (annoying buggers that at first blush might be mistaken for mosquitoes, but they don't actually bite), and I did find lots of midges stuck to the substance. However, I don't know if they accidentally flew into it, or if the substance is in some way related to the insects' life cycle.

Completely stumped, I posted to iNaturalist and also asked some naturalist friends on Facebook, but nobody could come up with a satisfying answer. The most compelling hypothesis was unfertilized frogspawn, though that doesn't make much sense up in the air, splattered all over the thorny rose bushes. Perhaps an animal ate the frogspawn, then vomited on the plants?? But that would be a lot of puking.

Oh, and it gets weirder. I learned that there's even folklore about substances called "star jelly," which seems to be the translucent-slime equivalent of a UFO. People have been reporting sightings of strange gelatinous goop as far back as the 14th century, and some believe that it falls from the sky during a meteor shower.

What do you think? Have you seen this kind of substance before? When I returned to the property a week later, there was no trace of the stuff. Also, most of the short-lived midges were dead, if those insects had any relation to the goop. It remains a mystery. Maybe I'll see it again next year and get a sample.