Super, natural: Eggplant brings couple fame, lure of fortune

Felicia Teske was on the phone at 1 a.m. yesterday talking about God with a late-night talk-show host from California.

Hours later, a radio station from Iowa was calling her Delaware County home asking for an interview. Then it was a British chap in New York preparing to send a story back to England . . . then someone from Kansas City.

They all wanted to know about one thing:

The eggplant.

Less than two days after Felicia's husband, Paul, called a local TV station with a story - the seeds inside their eggplant spelled "GOD" - the Teskes have become a focus of national media attention.

Their "local" story went around the country and back. An interview with WMGK's (102.9-FM) John DeBella is scheduled for today.

"I've just had it with this. I had no idea it was going to get out of hand like this," Felicia Teske said of the media coverage. She sounded exasperated.

As of yesterday afternoon, the Boothwyn couple had been interviewed by more than 10 news organizations about their exalted eggplant.

What does it mean? Is it a sign? What are you going to do with it?

"God created that eggplant. He also put the seeds in that eggplant, and he guided my wife's hand to cut it where she did," said Paul Teske, a bus driver for the Penn-Delco School District.

The vegetable may be sacred, but it's also for sale on eBay - under the listing "Holy 'God' Eggplant." Starting price: $1,000.

No bidders had emerged as of early this morning, but these things are unpredictable. A 10-year-old cheese sandwich that resembled the Virgin Mary sold for $28,000 on eBay in 2004; an eggplant shaped like a nose is yours for $5 right now.

"We're putting it up on eBay because if the Man Upstairs showed it to us because he wants us to benefit from it, well, maybe we'll benefit from it," Paul Teske said.

Meanwhile, the "Divine Eggplant" story is being discussed in online forums - "I only buy atheist eggplant," one person quipped - and posted at places like Signs of Witness, a Web site that "tracks putative signs of the supposed apocalypse and end times for unbelievers, believers and the unbelieved."

There's a lesson to be learned from all of this - not about God, but about the 21st-century news media, according to Andrew Mendelson, chairman of Temple University's journalism department. It's hard to dip your toe in the fast-moving media whirlpool without risking getting sucked in.

"The Internet, and the media system in general, doesn't really have feelings, per se," Mendelson said. "Individuals have feelings, but the system just wants more information."

"A lot of people aren't prepared for the intensity," he said. *