The Little Dog Laughed To See Such A Sport

by Mike Mayak

The old farmhouse was filled with the quiet of a Summer night when Miss Kitty started awake from her curled position at the foot of Hetty’s bed, her whiskers twitching.

The soft whirring noise was coming from outside.

Miss Kitty’s soft “Mrrrp” caused Hetty to stir and then sit up in bed.

“What’s the matter, Sweetheart?” Hetty asked.

“Mrrrp.” Miss Kitty said.

Hetty scratched behind the cat’s ears and then noticed the whirring noise which had gotten slightly louder. Also there was a soft blue glow coming through the curtained bedroom window.

“Let’s go see,” Hetty said determinedly, quickly putting on her slippers and robe as Miss Kitty jumped to the floor.

The two of them walked through the house, its usual semi-darkness lit by the light from outside.

Hetty and Miss Kitty stepped outside onto the back porch. The light was bright enough that she could clearly read the date, 1916, over the door of the barn her Grandfather had raised. There was a gibbous Moon angling through the sky.

And a softly glowing blue and white disc hovering over the yard between the barn and the house.

The disc looked solid and metallic and was as wide as the barn and from what Hetty could see not as tall. There was a rise in the top of the disc, the disc being angled slightly downward as if to give them a better view. It was just hanging there in the air at level with the top of the barn.

“Mrrrp?” Miss Kitty said quizzically.

“I think this counts as a Close Encounter,” Hetty said, giving the saucer the once over. If it wasn’t an actual flying saucer it certainly looked like it. What sort of people were inside it, she wondered.

“Hello,” Hetty called out, feeling a little silly. “Welcome to Earth. This is the O’Hara farm. In Kansas,” she added wondering if the saucer had GPS or some kind of printed map.

The saucer just hung there, the Moon looking very small behind it. The gentle whirring noise quietly filled the yard. Hetty stepped off the porch and went across the yard to the saucer, Miss Kitty trotting along beside her. Hetty kept remembering the old rhyme about the cat, the fiddle, the dish and a cow jumping over the Moon. She wondered if the saucer had been to the Moon or if it maybe came from the Moon. This despite everything the astronauts had said about the Moon.

Miss Kitty sat there looking up at the saucer, making the gentle “Mrrrp” sound, which made a nice accompaniment to the saucer’s whirring. Hetty wondered if the saucer people wanted to take them up with them. She wished she’d had the foresight to cancel the newspaper and stop the mail delivery.

Could the saucer be seen from the highway? Hetty wondered. She knew she could see the lights from the big trucks at night on the highway and that she could see the top of the barn from the highway. Maybe the newspaper people would come to the farm if the saucer stayed there in mid-air.

But a few minutes later the saucer’s whirring became louder and it backed up into the sky and then streaked off, looking like nothing so much as meteorites she had seen.

Hetty stood there for a few minutes, not expecting the saucer to return, but still she felt like she was waiting. She turned and headed back to the house, the yard now lit only by Moonlight and starlight.

“I would have turned on the porch light except the saucer was so bright,” she said aloud. Miss Kitty trotted ahead of her and waited at the door for Hetty to follow.

When they were both back in bed, Hetty lay awake for a while, she realized the saucer would be back someday. And she remembered the one thing the saucer had said, just before it vanished into the sky.

The voice from the saucer had said: “Mrrrp?”

—end—