A woman has been hit with a fine after two paramedics were hit with a half-eaten pork chop as they tried to convince her to stop sitting in the middle of the road.
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It's not clear why the 21-year-old was apparently eating the hunk of meat at 4.40am on an inner-city Darwin street but the pig projectile has been labelled a "waste of a pork chop".
The paramedics were on their way back to the station from another job when they noticed the woman, apparently drunk, sitting in the road on Daly Street, to the north-east of the city centre.
St John's Ambulance Northern Territory operations manager Craig Garraway said they stopped the car but the woman refused to budge.
The paramedics were calling police to help when something sailed through the window, hitting one in the face and the other in the arm.
"Now they didn't know what had happened at the time," Mr Garraway said.
"They turned the light on and realised she'd thrown a pork chop through the window and hit both of them and fell to the floor."
Not wanting to hang around for any more hog-based assaults, the ambos rolled up the window and drove off, leaving police to deal with the "quite abusive" woman.
They arrived a short time afterward and fined the woman for disorderly behaviour in a public place, which reportedly carries a $472 penalty.
Both police and paramedics warned assaulting a public officer was a serious crime but in this case Mr Garraway said the officers found the incident "very amusing in the end".
"They're in good spirits and they think it's quite funny," he said.
"These things unfortunately happen quite regularly, not so much pork chops being thrown."
The paramedics had no idea where the pork chop had come from but assumed the hungry reveller must have been chowing down as she took a break in the roadway.
"It was a waste of a pork chop, and I suppose the question is, where do you get a pork chop at four o'clock in the morning?" Mr Garraway said.
"And was it cooked I suppose is the next question, or was it raw?
"I can't answer that question. I don't think she's won a meat tray earlier in the night.
"I suppose luckily for our officers she didn't have a fork with her or a knife to eat it."
Mr Garraway said unfortunately people regularly threw things at St John's Ambulance officers, who are contracted to provide the state-run ambulance service in both the Top End and Western Australia.
Rocks and beer cans were most common but he said the list of projectiles extended to kangaroo tails and other weird items.
