The seagulls woke her up.

At Joanne Alvaré’s creekside home of more than 20 years on Dock Road in Eagleswood Township, the sound of gulls is not unusual, but this August morning was different. The birds were flocking right outside her house, she said, and feathers were flying, not to mention the excrement. Something in the water was causing a frenzy.

Upon investigation, she found an alarming number, easily hundreds by her estimation, of dead peanut bunker floating in her section of Westecunk Creek.