A penne for the thoughts of a small New Jersey town who were shocked to find 500lbs of pasta dumped in the nearby woods.

The starchy discovery was made by a local resident taking a stroll near their home in Old Bridge Township, New Jersey.

After spotting the bizarre amount of carbs gnocch-ing around, they decided to alert Nina Jochnowitz, who previously ran for city council in the sixth ward.

She snapped up a series of pics and shared them to Facebook on 28 April.

“The Mayor and his (posse) continue to ignore the Sixth Ward. No surprise when we see the dumping of construction and other garbage spewed in all of the neighborhoods,” reads the public post by Jochnowitz.

“This week, there was a new type of dumping, of excessive food, PASTA.”

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After the images went viral, the pastabilities of terrible pasta jokes were endless.

"It was pasta expiration date," said one person on Reddit.

"We should send the perpetrators to the state penne tentiary,” another joked.

However, regardless of the jokes, it seems that the explanation behind the obscene amounts of pasta was not particularly a nice one.

Local residents of the Middlesex County town believe that the pasta piles came from a nearby house that had been put up for sale after the owner sadly died.

The son of the deceased property owner allegedly threw out a large supply of expired groceries from the home.

"I mean, I really feel like he was just trying to clear out his parents' house and they were probably stocked up from COVID," neighbour Keith Rost told NBC.

However, regardless of how and why the food was dumped, as pointed out by Jochnowitz, the pasta itself could be a danger to their water stream.

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"You might say, ‘Who cares about pasta?’" Jochnowitz told The Philadelphia Inquirer. "But pasta has a pH level that will impact the water stream.

"The water stream is important to clean up because it feeds into the town’s water supply."

A council member told TODAY.com in an email: “On April 28, 2023 pictures of illegally dumped pasta started to circulate on several local Facebook groups.”

Himanshu Shah, business administrator for Old Bridge Township, said: “DPW visited the site and did in fact find what appeared to be 15 wheel barrel loads of illegal dumped pasta along a creek in a residential neighborhood.

“We would estimate several hundred pounds of uncooked pasta that was removed from the packaging and then dumped along the creek.

“It looks like it was only there for a short time but moisture did start to soften some of the pasta,” - which explains why the pasta looked cooked.