Help Mr. Answer Person

Mr. Answer Person has spent the last two weeks trying to get an answer to Bruce's e-mail: "I could swear I saw an MQ-9 Reaper drone flying over Decorah one morning about a week ago.  Are we under surveillance?"

At first Mr. Answer Person thought people were misidentifying an airplane owned by a Luana man.  Then more readers e-mailed about their spotting of a drone.  Now half a dozen decorahnews.com readers have reported spotting a drone flying overhead.  If any reader has taken a photo of the drone, we'd appreciate it if you e-mailed the picture to us.

So if we rule out mass hysteria, we have to assume that it, indeed, has been a drone flying overhead.  So who's drone is it?

We have already reported about the controversy over the EPA's use of drones to monitor livestock confinement operations, but that seems a bit of a stretch.

On Thursday the Des Moines Register reported another possibility: "The USDA's Natural Resources Conservation Service said Wednesday it used aerial photography in May to review about 1,620 sites in about 90 Iowa counties for annual conservation compliance."

So are those drones in the air over Winneshiek County?  Probably.  Who is using the drones?  Mr. Answer Person doesn't know, but we'll keep trying to track down an answer--because everyone needs a hobby!