I saw a UFO on Sunday, and I wasn't alone. Trouble is, I'm sure there's a good explanation. Ask any expert.
"Well, what you're seeing is actually the planet Venus." But it landed on my lawn. "That's called atmospheric lensing; it just looks nearer than it is. "It set down on the jungle gym and crushed it." That's called the overweight kid from a few houses down playing without permission." (Indulgent chuckle.)
It made a high screaming noise and 50 geese dropped dead out of the sky with their feathers melted. "We've been seeing a lot of fast-acting avian parasites in migratory species lately."
It took my wife. "Well, you know what they say, men are from Mars, women are from Venus! Call us if you have any other questions."
Everything can be explained. A few years ago I saw an incredibly fast light streak low across the sky, east to west, parallel to the ground; if it was the International Space Station, they were picking tree leaves out of their antennas for days.
Which brings me back to the alien spacecraft we saw last Sunday. My wife and I were outside. "What's that?" she said, pointing up. It was a spherical, silver object, like those hard things they use to decorate cakes and make you chip a tooth.
"A child's balloon," I said, because as we all know the streets are full of kids carrying helium balloons who are startled by a backfiring car and let go of the string. But — holy crow! — it was surrounded by a swarm of other small objects, some of which were segmented and moving around it.
Wait, no, those are floaters in my eyeball.
A drone? Too high, and we're right in the flight path for the airport. If you're some idiot flying a drone around an airport and you see your toy go into a passenger jet's engine, you drive home really fast wondering if you can wipe that off your Amazon purchase history.
A few days later a story pops up in reddit.com: Anyone see that big UFO over Midway? Sunday afternoon? Cars were pulled over, people were looking up and pointing. City Pages picked up the story, and now here I am moving it up the Ladder of Credible Media Outlets.
But here's the one nagging question: Where are the pictures?
Everyone has movie cameras in their pockets now. No video of this thing? Well, I can only speak for myself. My iPhone couldn't zoom enough. I ran upstairs to get my good video camera, pointed it up at the sky — and I got a dead battery alert.
That's why there's no pictures. Scientists will tell you: Venus will drain your battery as fast as anything.
