When Megan Rockel came home from playing in the park yesterday morning, the first thing the eight-year-old asked her mother for was an ice pack.

That's when her mother Sandy noticed the red splotches on her daughter's arms and legs.

Megan was one of six children under 12 who needed medical attention yesterday after receiving minor chemical burns from playground equipment at Maplewood Park on the Stoney Creek Mountain.

None of them was seriously injured -- they had rashes and itchy, puffy eyes.

"There were three of us and little kids, too," Megan said. "The smaller kids started screaming."

Police found the remnants of a brown liquid that looked like it had been sprayed on the monkey bars and on railings of the structures where the children reported playing.

The park was closed and will be fenced off until the city hears from public health officials, said Tennessee Propedo, the city's district superintendent of operations and maintenance. That will probably be Monday.

Public health officers conducted tests on the equipment yesterday afternoon. Police had not yet identified the substance.

"There is a possibility the chemical could have been deliberately sprayed," said east end patrol Sergeant Chris Wills.

"This could be someone's sick idea of a joke."

Another theory is that someone could have been spraying a chemical in the wooded area near the playground and the wind blew it toward the kids.

Wills said some residents reported seeing a man with an unmarked white truck with a white barrel in the cab, spraying something along the treeline.

He added there were no city sprayings scheduled to take place in the area that day.

Playgrounds have been tampered with in the past, including a series of incidents in 2004.

* In October that year, teenagers glued and siliconed shards of glass to the monkey bars and a slide in Burlington's Des Jardines park.

* That same month, a bouquet of flowers with rusty razors glued to the stems was found outside W.H. Ballard school on Dunsmure Road.

* Also in October, two teenagers were spotted in Westdale pounding nails into a park bench in Churchill Park.

* In November that year, a boy found a board with 27 protruding nails buried "tips up" at a playground near Rosedale elementary school on Erindale Avenue.

cwhitwell@thespec.com

905-526-2452