»In which we may have beluga barf!

A woman in Long Island may have received four pounds of whale vomit, ambergris worth about $18,000, as a gift from her landlocked sister. She almost certainly cannot sell it, though, as the US Endangered Species Act prohibits trading in ambergris and other whale by-products.

I'm pretty sure I first learned about ambergris through the adventures of Encyclopedia Brown, boy detective (RIP), in "Smelly Nellie and the Ambergris".