Is it jihad cookie time again already?

A brave operation involving a state police bomb squad and multiple state police protected the town of Marshalls Creek, Pennsylvania (population 297), Monday from a box of cookies with Arabic writing on it.

Someone left a box of cookies with Arabic writing at a gas pump at the Marshalls Creek Gulf station, manager Anne Wolfe said.

A customer noticed the cookies and called police to the station on Route 209, just off Interstate 80 exit 309.

Police showed up, informed the gas station employees they needed to evacuate, and probably one or two did, in their pants. In what may be either an indicator of how little danger there actually was or just not very good emergency procedure, the gas station employees "went to the business next door," which seems like it wouldn't necessarily get you out of the blast radius of the average improvised explosive Mallomar. The police set up flares at the driveway entrance to the gas station -- nowhere near the pumps, we're happy to say -- and blocked the entrance with squad cars. A "Hazardous Devices and Explosives Unit van" arrived to help out, as did at least three Pennsylvania State Police squad cars.

The cookies were eventually determined to contain flour, sugar, some sort of butter or oil, maybe some rosewater (we are hoping they had rosewater, because those are DELICIOUS) and no explosive compounds, and operations at the gas station returned to normal by noon.

By some miracle, Donald Trump did not take to Twitter to pledge heightened vigilance against snack foods.

Still, the message is clear: If you see something, say something. Or maybe try not to freak the fuck out. When one commenter on the article in the Pocono Record ridiculed the cookie scare as paranoid, another expressed sincere hopes that the first commenter would die in a terrorist bombing.

[Pocono Record via RawStory]