MINOT – It came from a garden but it doesn’t stimulate the appetite. When she gazes upon it, Barbara Greenwood doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

Or scream.

It’s an oversized turnip perhaps better suited for a Halloween display than a dinner table.

“To me, it looks like something that came from the sea,” said Barbara, whose husband plucked the horror from their garden on Grange Road. “It looks like it’s covered with barnacles.”

Which is a generous description. The mutant vegetable features thick knots that look like knuckles and tentacles reaching in all directions.

“Have you ever seen anything like this?” said Albert “Blinky” Greenwood, who dug up the turnip Thursday afternoon. “Isn’t that something?”

It’s something, all right. But not something many people would be inclined to serve for supper.

“Eat it?” said Barbara. “I don’t think so. It looks too weird.”

Blinky said he had no idea why the vegetable turned out deformed. He has grown many turnips in the gardens behind his home, but none like this one.

By Thursday night, the couple had no idea what they would do with the monstrosity. It would make a lousy pet and anyway, the Greenwoods had no idea what they would call it.

“Neptune,” Barbara said. “Maybe.”