Surprise! How to Make a Styrofoam Chaff Bomb

When I moved a couple months ago, my last load included an empty cardboard box, which had contained something I ordered online. Since it was empty, I never bothered to actually bring it in; it’s been sitting in the back seat of my car all summer—a quiet, brown, rectangular passenger.

Today I was driving home from work with my windows down when my little Miss Daisy decided to cause some ruckus—she apparently got caught by the wind just right and came open. I soon found out it wasn’t empty after all, as it deployed a cloud of styrofoam packing peanuts throughout my vehicle and out onto Superior street. I quickly rolled up my windows (well, as quickly as one can wait for electric windows to go up), but the damage was done. I’m sure I’ll probably still be finding styrofoam in my car for months.

So I guess the moral here is not drive around with a loosely closed box of styrofoam in the back seat of your car for an entire summer.