No, that wasn't the stench of Cook Co. government

For years, people have complained about the waste that goes on in the Cook County boardroom.

But never like this.

On Wednesday, someone - officials aren't sure who - may have brought in feces and left them behind, so to speak, in the audience at the county board's biweekly meeting.

Board President Todd Stroger called a half-hour break while the mess was cleaned up.

"Today we eliminated waste in Cook County," quipped board secretary Matt DeLeon.

Officials weren't 100 percent sure the mess wasn't the accident of a child, but witnesses said they saw no child in the area of the boardroom where the remnant was discovered. They also pooh-poohed the idea that someone had inadvertently tracked it in because they found no trail.

Some boardroom occupants also speculated it may have been someone's clandestine way of raising a political stink, because a group of community activists all wearing similar T-shirts were spotted getting up simultaneously in the area of the waste and leaving en masse.

However, officials weren't sure the group wasn't simply leaving to get away from the smell once it was.