A pile of bones found between two walls at Gloucester Plantation had local officials curious about foul play — but they turned out to be animal bones, said Adams County Coroner James Lee.

Jessie McKnight, an employee at Gloucester Plantation, found the bones this week while cleaning an outside room.

&uot;It’s not everyday you come across something like that,&uot; said McKnight, who moved to Natchez from Louisiana a month ago. &uot;I had to come all the way from New Orleans to find bones.&uot;

Lee sent the bones away for analysis Wednesday to determine if they were human or animal remains.

By the afternoon the Mississippi Medical Examiners Office ruled the bones were &uot;definitely not human remains&uot; and destroyed them.

If officials had any doubt about the bones, they would have sent them to an anthropologist in Memphis, Lee said.

McKnight found the bones behind a wall while sweeping a section of the house used as a trash room.

The wall ended just a few inches from the floor allowing the bones to fall gradually into the room as they were pulled out.

&uot;He would pull out a bone and another would fall from behind the wall,&uot; said Beth George.

George and her husband Vern moved into Gloucester in February. Their dog and teenage son had also found bones in that area, she said.

The bones had been cut into pieces, but none of the pieces resembled human finger bones, a human skull or human teeth, officials said.

No one knows why those bones were placed in the wall.

&uot;These old houses have lots of mysteries,&uot; George said, adding these bones could be another one.

George said she had hoped the bones would be identified as animal remains and if they were not she was just glad they were out of the wall of the house.

The wall where the bones were located is an interior wall separated by just a few inches from a brick wall of the house built in the early 1800s.

Someone had written the name J.D. Gibson was written on the wall and the date Sept. 12, 1939.

Lee said he could not be sure of the age of the bones expect that they were old.

And even though they turned out to be animal bones, he thinks it was a good idea to collect them for examination.

It was worth the effort &uot;to make sure that wasn’t human bones behind that wall,&uot; he said.