COEUR d'ALENE - It's a bird, it's a plane, it's, it's, it's two planes, apparently.

That booming noise residents heard around 4 p.m. Wednesday?

It came from a pair of military-looking jets flying over Coeur d'Alene and Hayden, multiple witnesses reported.

But if they really were military jets, what were they doing here? And where were they headed?

That part, nobody knows. That is, they're not coughing up any info.

Fairchild Air Force Base near Spokane, Naval Air Station in Whidbey Island, Wash., Mountain Home Air Force Base, Boise International Guard, and bases in Utah, Klamath Falls, Ore., and Great Falls Mont., all said the jets - if they really, truly were jets - didn't belong to them.

"I don't know where else I can turn," said Sgt. Eugene Taylor, spokesman at Fairchild Air Force Base who exhausted all his military connections trying to find the possible home base for the alleged jets that were described as incredibly loud and acrobatic by North Idaho witnesses.

"It had nothing to do with the show or us," said Greg Delavan, Coeur d'Alene Airport director. "We don't have any unusual activity like that at the airport."

The airport is hosting a big plane show, "Heritage Wings," next week. Big boy military planes are supposed to land in town for the festivities on Monday, but as for Wednesday's suspicious flights, the local airstrip wasn't any the wiser.

Worse, just because a plane flies through a local airspace, it doesn't have to report to the locals.

And the Federal Aviation Administration?

That department said Thursday without more specific flight log information, they have no way of knowing anything about the alleged planes, either.

The back story is this: On Wednesday, some people heard a loud noise in the sky. On Thursday, The Press ran a story about how an unidentified loud noise had been heard in the sky.

After the story ran, witnesses called to say rather politely, "They were planes, you lazy newspaper. All you had to do is look up."

"We were looking to see where the noise was coming from," said Judie Whitaker, Hayden Lake, who described them as looking like fighter jets. "The noise was just horrendous."

Some described them as so high-flying, they were barely visible.

Others claimed the crafts flew so low, they were in danger of nicking roof tops.

Some said they were flying like they were dog-fighting, or putting on an acrobatic show.

"Somebody knows something," said Allen Kenitzer, FAA spokesman, who thinks a likely story is that they were military jets doing what they wanted, and wouldn't tell any news outlet even if it asked because, well, it's the military and it doesn't have to say anything to anybody if it doesn't want to. "The military operates in the civilian airspace, but they do it differently."

Here's Glen Anderson's theory: The Coeur d'Alene man thinks they were a pair of hot-shot military pilots showing off for the local populace. Anderson used to live near bases around Seattle and heard low flying craft often. He would also hear stories about hot-dogging pilots getting caught and having to face the music back at base.

"It sounds like someone needs to be reprimanded," Anderson said.

Because those theories are incredibly logical, they're no fun to believe.

Instead, with military bases around the West not fessing up, we turn to Facebook, which is completely devoid of rumor and gossip and focuses instead on relevant facts.

According to multiple Coeur d'Alene area Facebookers, a meteor was spotted falling from the sky Tuesday night.

Hmmm. Meteor, jets, military cover-up, now we're getting somewhere.